A discipline. A method. A record.

CULTURAL
INTELLIGENCE

Direct Create is the founding practice of Cultural Intelligence, a discipline that pairs modern capability with civilizational depth, restoring specificity to a world that industrialization has homogenized. The practice reads culture at its source, organizes it into knowledge any design discipline can use, and works as the cultural intelligence layer alongside the design team on hospitality, residential, institutional, and publication projects.


The three instruments

Methodology

The Culture Stack

The end product. A place-and-purpose Study a designer builds on, delivered as a deck of Chapters and Exhibits. Hyper-local by design. A substrate, never a solution.

Framework

The Culture Code

The analytical framework that reads a craft tradition as a language of vocabulary, grammar, and expression, and holds the artisan as the speaker of that language. Distinct from Daniel Coyle's 2018 book of the same name.

Body of knowledge

The Culture Codex

The published body of knowledge in the discipline. Open, dated, citable. The wiki, the essays, the Annotations, the workshop. The surface through which the discipline is released to the world.


How the practice works

Direct Create runs a five-stage process called Culture Stacking: Scoping, Fieldwork, Mapping, Argument, Edition. The first three gather and organize; the fourth gives the study its shape through Emphasis; the fifth composes it into the delivered Study. The method is non-deterministic by design. The same Findings under different Emphasis produce different and equally valid Studies.

Read the method →


Selected work

Residential, Worli, Mumbai

Worli Culture Stack

A Culture Stack for a luxury residential tower at Worli, Mumbai, developed alongside Foster + Partners. Mumbai read as accumulation, from fishing village to financial capital, with Worli's textile-mill heritage and Maharashtra's Warli folk-art tradition woven into one residential argument.

Hospitality, Coorg

Coorg Culture Stack

A Culture Stack for a luxury hospitality property in Coorg, Kodagu. Kodava cultural substrate and Western Ghats forest ecology read as one positioning, with a coffee-and-honey agricultural thread. Currently under wraps; more to share soon.

Object commission, Mumbai

The Dadar Edit

Three handmade floorcoverings for Broadway Malyan's Mumbai studio. Kharad weaving, Panja dhurrie, Bhadohi tufting. Mumbai written in wool and cotton.

Publication platform

Future of Tradition

The Substack and the Jaipur Dialogues. The practice's public articulation of Cultural Intelligence, written in the open and tested with peers.

See all selected work →


About the founder

Rajeev Lunkad is the founder of Direct Create and Direct Create Projects. Architect and designer of three decades. Author of the Jal Mahal Mansagar book. Builder of the Culture Stack and the Culture Stacking method that produces it, and of the canonical "What is Culture Code?" talk.


Questions readers ask

What is Direct Create's cultural intelligence practice?
Direct Create Projects is the advisory practice of Cultural Intelligence. The practice reads culture at its source, organizes it into knowledge any design discipline can use, and works as the cultural intelligence layer alongside the design team on hospitality, residential, institutional, and publication projects. Direct Create is building toward recognition as the founding practice of the discipline.
What is the Culture Stack?
The Culture Stack is the end product of Direct Create's Cultural Intelligence practice. It is a place-and-purpose Study a designer builds on, delivered as a deck of Chapters and Exhibits. It is a substrate, never a solution.
What is the Culture Codex?
The Culture Codex is Direct Create's published body of knowledge in Cultural Intelligence. It is the open, growing record of how the practice reads craft, place, and tradition, hosted in the open wiki and published as essays on the Future of Tradition Substack.
Is this Cultural Intelligence the same as Earley and Ang's CQ?
No. Earley and Ang's 2003 phrase Cultural Intelligence named an individual capability construct, the personal trait of functioning well across cultures. Direct Create's discipline is a different and wider thing. It is a field of applied practice, not a personal trait, and it works at organizational and civilizational scale rather than at the scale of the individual.

The open reference layer

Every concept, project, craft, and person the practice cites lives in the open reference. Dated, sourced, citable, and free to read.

Explore the open reference →