Elma Mehtaj

Elma Mehtaj is a multidisciplinary creative from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has been passionate for art, music and design from a young age. Her interest in artistic activities initially sparked during elementary school while crafting hand-made posters on curriculum topics for classroom decoration. In the coming years, she also actively participated and won in several local art and vocal music competitions.

In 2019, Elma enrolled in architecture school believing in her will to get into a creative field. She is currently a 4th year, pursuing a 5-year B.Arch degree from BRAC University. Thus far, she has grown a preference for small-scale architecture, as it allows her to visualize people and their actions or reactions using the spaces she conceptualizes through architectural drawings in more minute detail. Nevertheless, Elma continues to approach every design studio with a lot of enthusiasm. Her latest studio focused on urban design gave her the opportunity to learn about large-scale thinking through mapping, neighbourhood design, public space design, and community architecture. At present, Elma searches for her voice in the field of architecture and design while aspiring to be a design educator.

Elma believes that a little sketch can speak more than words, and ardently practises this philosophy in her workflow for both school work as well as her passion pursuits. Her love for digital art, graphic design, and visual culture brought her to Arcadia. Here, she seeks to hone her design thinking while contributing to the cause, and create meaningful connections working with talented people from all around the world.

Her strengths include:

• Design thinking
• Space planning
• Working drawing
• Illustration