Having worked on their obsessions in parallel worlds for several years, Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava joined forces through their blog airoots/eirut in 2006. They have since written extensively on urban themes and engaged in projects involving architecture, design, planning, anthropology, pedagogy and technology. They are the co-directors of the Institute of Urbanology, which has offices in Mumbai and Goa (India). They are also co-founders of the urbz.net collective, which organizes collaborative design workshops in places such as Tokyo, Istanbul, Mumbai, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Rio. They have presented their work in institutions such as MoMA, Urban Age, Columbia University, Berkeley, Princeton University, Strelka Institute in Moscow, the University of Rio, the University of Tokyo, the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm, the ETH and EPFL in Switzerland, and the World Bank. They have co-written academic essays and commentaries for various publishers, magazines and newspapers including Oxford University Press, Strelka Press, Domus (Milan), Tokyo University Press, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, The Times of India, Time Out Mumbai, Art India and Indian Architect and Builder.

Matias Echanove studied economics & government at the London School of Economics, urban planning at Columbia University in New York and urban information systems at the University of Tokyo.

Rahul Srivastava studied social and urban anthropology in Mumbai, Delhi and Cambridge (UK). His previous publications include an ethnography of urbanized nomads around Mumbai and a novel published by Puffin, Penguin India.