Second Nature | Ashka Naik

Ashka Naik, Director, Capacity Building Programs

Ashka Naik joined Second Nature in January 2009 as a program manager for the Advancing Green Building Initiative. Before joining Second Nature, she has worked for the Office for Sustainability (OFS) at Harvard University. At OFS she acted as Project Coordinator for the High Performance Building Services’ New Construction team. Prior to that, she has worked extensively in India and the UK for last ten years on various design projects. She was promoted to the Director level in July 2010.

Following her passion for sustainability issues in the developing countries, she co-founded a sustainable design company (Artha Studio) in India in 2007. With the focus on the connection between social justice and environmental wellbeing, she has worked on community projects in rural milieu, designing shelter for battered women and conserving public school building for underprivileged children. The rich cultural inheritance of India is often translated in Ashka’s design projects, as she assimilates vernacular materials, resources and technologies in her designs.

Ashka is passionate about exploring a common platform between communities and sustainability through creative design thinking. Her commitment to sustainable design was reinforced during her education as an interior architect and subsequently as a product designer. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (India), and Master’s degree in Product Design from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (UK). During her education as an interior architect, she investigated the impacts of industrialization on the craftsmen’s communities across India. As part of her dissertation, she analyzed various facets of sustainable design thinking and their implementation as a key strategy for rejuvenating vanishing crafts in the country.

Recently, through her commitment to academia, Ashka has become involved with design institutions across India in bringing sustainability to their architecture and interior design programs’ core curricula.