About Commonsia
Good mentors shouldn't be a privilege.
We connect architecture students with practising architects — for portfolio reviews, career guidance, design crits, and the kind of conversation that shapes a career.
Shuja Rehman
Founder
How we got here
The Beginning
A thesis room at Jamia Millia Islamia. One seaplane airport project. A realisation that architectural knowledge is scattered — and access is luck.
A Community Forms
Open sessions for juniors. A WhatsApp group. Nearly 400 students, colleagues, and practitioners finding each other.
The Limits Show
WhatsApp doesn't scale. Mentors burn out. Students with the right contacts find answers; students without them don't.
Commonsia Today
Verified mentors. Structured sessions. Fair compensation. The same generosity — now with infrastructure behind it.
What we believe
Access over luck
A career shouldn't be decided by who you happen to know. The right senior at the right moment shouldn't be a matter of luck.
Beyond the studio
A jury teaches you to defend a project. A mentor teaches you to build a life around one. The most important conversations happen outside the studio.
Structure sustains generosity
Mentors give their time, their experience, their honesty. Our job is to make that worth their while — every single time.
We're building it.
Join us in reshaping architectural education — with real mentors, real conversations, and the structure to make guidance accessible.