Gita Nandan

Visiting Associate Professor Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment

Ms. Nandan is an architect, designer, educator, and leader in community resilience planning and design. She is a cofounder and principal of the award winning design firm thread collective, co- chair of Resilient Red Hook, board chair of RETI Center, and visiting associate professor at Pratt Institute GCPE and the School for Visual Arts. Ms. Nandan believes in resilience and sustainable design as an elastic and supple approach, integrating social, cultural, and economic issues with high design principles to create innovative net-positive urban environments.

Working in the field for over 20 years, Ms. Nandan has overseen design and construction on a wide range of proj- ect-types that span across many disciplines and scales, such as Concrete Waves, a skateboard storm water capture system for youth in the Lower East Side, to a net-zero field station along the Gowanus Canal. Her work is at the nexus of where design meets the ecology of place, and future proofing the city, driven by finding creative solutions. In addition to her current work, Ms. Nan- dan has lectured across the country, and been involved in sustainable design policy and code creation. In NYC she served as a member of the Homes Committee for Urban Green Codes Task Force; and the Building Resiliency Task Force. Ms. Nandan received her M. Arch from UC Berkeley and is a licensed practitioner in New York and New Jersey.

Project

Blue City Blue Blocks Garden (2021)