Arathi Gowda on movement culture and climate advocacy

Design the Future

Architect Arathi Gowda leads ZGF's East Coast Sustainability Practice. She is an advocate for collective climate action and is the current co-chair of US Architects Declare and a member of the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment Leadership Group. Arathi was at SOM for 20 years in Chicago before moving recently to her new role, and her move to DC reflects her ambitions around climate and advocacy as part of architecture.

Arathi is a keen observer of the architecture profession and the real estate and financial realms in which it functions. She notes that following the persistence of NIMBY-ism for years, “we are finally getting to a moment when there is no more Someone Else’s Backyard. Those of us who have some political power and institutional capacity need to do whatever we can to amplify that.” She points out that designers, as the optimists in the house, need to be rendering a post apocalyptic future that is beautiful and beneficial. “We need to show how positive the solutions for the collective good can be,” she says.