MEET THE NEW CREW
COTE Leadership Group + Liaisons
by Kira Gould, Hon. AIA
COTE’s strength and diversity are growing; this year, we welcome five new members to the national Leadership Group, plus two important new Liaisons.
At the start of this year (2022), five new members joined the COTE Leadership Group and we have two new liaison roles this year. I asked all seven of these leaders about why they applied to serve the profession in this way at this time and what kind of change they hope to effect. Meet the new crew ...
Leadership Group members:
Michelle Amt, AIA, LEED BD+C, WELL AP, is an Associate Principal and Director of Sustainability and Inclusion at VMDO Architects, working from its Charlottesville, Virginia, office. Amt served as the chair of the COTE Top Ten Awards Jury in 2021, and hopes that part of her influence during her time with COTE will be on that important flagship program, now in its 26th year. “The COTE Top Ten Award is the most rigorous and meaningful design award out there,” she says. “I applied to join the COTE Leadership Group to help shepherd the award into its next evolution—to better align with COTE’s current mission, to reduce the complexity of applying, and to encourage more firms to take part.”
Carlos Augusto Garcia, AIA, NCARB, is a Senior Architect with Brooks + Scarpa, working from the Los Angeles office, and he is interested in thinking about the impacts that the profession has in the long arc of human history. “This is our purview,” he says. “As makers of the built environment we have to be stewards of the natural environment.” Garcia hopes to work on advocacy because the problem of climate change is “so daunting and large that the only way we can get there is through policy change,” he says. “We have to be at the table and in the room where decisions are made. For too long, architects have taken a passenger-seat role. We’ve been missing the forest for the trees. We need wholesale change. And some policy makers are looking for our expertise.”
Arathi Gowda, AIA, AICP, LEED BD+C, is a Principal at ZGF where she leads the sustainability practice for the Washington, DC and New York offices. Following several years with SOM in Chicago, Gowda is relocating to Washington DC where she is looking forward to deepening her advocacy for climate policy and action in the built environment. “I think AIA and AIA members can have a meaningful impact in the context of the Build Back Better effort under this administration.” Gowda has been active with Architects Declare, and will look toward building that bridge to COTE and AIA, as well as other connections, both within and beyond the profession. “Collectively, we are stronger than any one of our firms.”
Christiana Moss, FAIA, is a principal at Studio Ma in Phoenix. She says that she’s looking forward to helping amplify the viability of sustainability in design and getting the efforts of architects out into the public realm as much as possible. “I have been impressed with COTE’s ability to drive change,” she says. “I think the Framework for Design Excellence [adapted by AIA from COTE’s measures in 2019] is a game changer. That inspired me to apply to work with COTE.” Moss says she would like to help strengthen relationships between regional and national efforts around advocacy and how information is conveyed--both directions.
Ganesh Nayak, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, is president of Metier Consulting, a sustainability and access consulting practice in Atlanta. He has been active in COTE and his component at the state and local levels. “Architects, and the awards programs we use to recognize excellence, tend to be a bit insular,” Nayak says. “I want to work on how we execute on sustainability as part of design but also how we make sustainability solutions more affordable, so that we can bring them to the people who need them the most.” He also sees a pressing need to “build bridges and deepen dialog with other groups in the industry,” including code groups. “I also think we could be doing a much better job of designing way beyond ADA. I think that the Framework for Design Excellence can be a portal for deeper exploration of intersecting issues such as universal access and existing buildings.”
Liaisons to the Leadership Group:
Kendall Claus, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is a designer and Sustainability Advisor with Perkins&Will in Austin, Texas. Claus has agreed to serve as our first COTE Network Liaison to the COTE Leadership Group. She has served as a COTE Network Leader for two years and before that was co-chair of the AIA Austin COTE chapter, where she helped integrate sustainability into the Design Awards and bring in the Common App. It is very encouraging and exciting to see the increasing energy bubbling up across the country within AIA chapters and their COTE groups,” Claus says. “In 2022 I hope to strengthen the connection between what's happening at the local level with National COTE's goals.”
Brittany Porter, AIA, is as Associate and Architect at Weber Thompson in Seattle, where she focuses on workplace projects, low-carbon design, biophilia, and mass timber. Porter is the first Young Architects Forum liaison to the COTE Leadership Group. “Throughout my career, I've found opportunities to deepen my understanding of sustainability in architecture,” she says. “I want to expand those opportunities to more young architects who are eager to build their careers from a foundation of sustainable design and practice. I am looking forward to seeing what collaborations and shared energies will be exchanged through this new role and am happy to be a part of it.”
Images in order: Amt, Garcia, Gowda, Moss, Nayak, Claus, Porter.