Sanjana Nair, MLA student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joined Depave Chicago as a Research Assistant in Summer 2025. In her role, Sanjana is creating depave design prototypes for a variety of urban sites and contexts, expanding resources and visual references on depaving-based green infrastructure, and helping to create a “Depave Chicago Manual” with how-to-depave information for the public.

Sanjana earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Mumbai University, and has served as a Teaching Assistant in Design Communication and Landform & Grading Construction. She brings a sharp visual eye to our work and a deep-rooted passion for using design to care for community needs, place-based design, and climate-responsive design. Sanjana’s project “For Melamchi: Between the Cracks of Loss, We Build Again” won a 2025 Sasaki Day Award, honoring its heartfelt, place-based approach to healing after disaster. For Sanjana, design isn’t about big gestures, it’s about small shifts that ripple outward.