Learning from Ganesh Nayak
By Kira Gould
In late July, COTE lost a leader and a friend. At 57, Ganesh Nayak, AIA, suffered a heart attack at home and died. This loss, felt most deeply and acutely by his wife, Sitara, and son, Ishan, as well as other family and close friends, is also felt in many communities that Ganesh touched though his personal and professional lives.
I met Ganesh in 2017, through the COTE Network, while he was an active leader of AIA Atlanta’s COTE group, and have have been learning from him every since that time. Professionally, what stood out to me about Ganesh is that he saw the big picture about holistic design – that thinking holistically could address sustainability, inclusion, and justice all at one time. If more people in the AEC/RE world understood this, our progress would be far faster and smoother.
I was lucky to work with him on the COTE Leadership Group as we defined the climate action and climate justice scope of work, and we had many searching conversations about inclusion, equity, and climate justice. It is not an exaggeration to say that I learned from him with every interaction -- about about these topics and about how to lead with joy, compassion, and a truly collaborative spirit.
One of Ganesh's strengths was that he saw potential all around him – in our profession and in people and institutions. This was no pollyanna optimism, it was deep belief in the human instinct for good. He believed that we could do better, individually and together, and he was determined to find ways toward collective progress. Along the way, he showed us all how to find joy every day. His joy was infectious, and his laugh and hugs were deep and warm. Ganesh had such a boundless, open heart that he was a leader and collaborator in many overlapping spheres.
The International Living Future Institute invited Ganesh to speak as part of its May conference, Living Future 24. His Future Flow talk about Designing Differently for Disability was personal and powerful (the organization has generously made that talk available at this link). It is a deep and moving statement about why design matters.
Ellen Mitchell, a member of the COTE Leadership Group who worked with Ganesh, says that “Ganesh speaks about inclusion as being a two-way street. The ability of different kinds of people to interact with each other benefits and changes everyone involved. That is how I feel about having known Ganesh. I will admit that I had not given a lot of thought to designing for disability beyond ADA before meeting him but my perspective profoundly changed because of his story. I will forever be grateful to him for that. He will be sorely missed, but his legacy will live on through the many others like me who were impacted by knowing him.”
COTE chair Michelle Amt posted about Ganesh’s death and suggested the following:
“In addition to doubling down on kindness and joy, we can continue his legacy by truly embracing his agenda for accessible architecture:
1) Consider regulatory compliance as minus ground zero and principles of universal design as a minimum.
2) Embrace and celebrate the otherness of disability, gender, race, sexuality, class, immigration, caste, et cetera, and recognize that otherness is natural and a part of the human experience, and not a problem that needs to be fixed.
3) Adopt a collaborative approach to design and invite people with disabilities, with lived experience, to have a seat at the table in space programming and conceptual stages of design.
4) Create places that are sincerely diverse and rich, and address the widest spectrum of disability or ability, both visible and invisible, and create environments where neurodivergent people flourish.
5) Reclaim and reaffirm the dignity and self-worth of people with disabilities by providing safe, restorative spaces that make them whole from the indignities of everyday negotiations and transactions that people with disabilities need to make simply to live.”
COTE Leadership Group member Carlos Augustus Garcia recalled a moment at AIA25 when he and fellow LG members Lori Ferriss, AIA, and Joyce Raybuck, AIA, along with Sandeep Ajuja, were telling Ganesh what an amazing man he was. "He’d always take every compliment given to him," Garcia recalled, "and somehow reframe it as praise for others. He went out of his way to support everyone in his orbit, selflessly, with poise. I'll remember him laughing and shining light on everyone around him."
You can find a thorough obituary here (scroll down to his name) and here, which includes a reference to an organization that he cared about Parent to Parent of Georgia; https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/p2pga.