Mr. Kuttu Narayan AIA, LEED AP

Mr. Kuttu Narayan is the Principal of Global Sustainable Design, PLLC (GSD), an architectural, planning, and community design firm that he formed in Charlotte, North Carolina. GSD focuses on helping clients design site-sensitive, sustainable projects and contributing in a positive way to the community and planet.

Mr. Narayan began his career at two highly regarded New York architectural firms, Kohn Pedersen Fox and Perkins Eastman. A number of the projects that you see in the Portfolio section of this web site were done during his employment at these firms. Mr. Narayan served as Project Architect and Senior Designer on a number of major commercial projects throughout the country. His versatility and creativity have enabled him to excel in design as well as project management. The projects that he has worked on include: construction documentation for Procter & Gamble Headquarters in Cincinnati, OH; design drawings for 2 high-rise buildings in NYC, and large commercial, residential, and mixed-use projects throughout the United States. He was also on the lead design team for the 14-story New York Foundling Hospital for destitute mothers, children, and the elderly.

Mr. Narayan was selected to represent U.S. high-rise architecture for “Design USA,” a U.S.-government exhibit in Soviet Russia. Many of the architectural projects that he has worked on have been published in prominent architectural magazines, including Progressive Architecture and Architectural Record. He has also taught Architecture and Interior Design classes at New York City Technical College and The New York School of Interior Design.

During the past four years, Mr. Narayan held the position of Director of Architecture in the Charlotte, NC, office of ARCADIS, a multi-disciplinary firm providing services for the design of infrastructure, environment and facilities. Prior to this, he was a SVP in the Corporate Real Estate Department of Wachovia Bank. While there, Mr. Narayan was a Relationship manager, Regional Director and a Projects Process Leader. At Wachovia, he recruited, engaged, and led cross-functional teams to generate policies and processes for project approval and delivery, authored the forms, communicated the changes, and trained the users and senior managers in the new procedures. His innovations significantly contributed towards the successful management of allocated capital ($245MM) and one-time expense ($300MM) related to the merger of Wachovia and First Union National Bank.