As the strategic design and planning lead for the Battery Park City Authority, Varun focuses on urban resiliency and de-carbonization of new and existing buildings in Battery Park City (BPC), the 92-acre development in Lower Manhattan. He previously led the sustainability team at Buro Happold, which drafted BPC’s Sustainability Plan and Green Guidelines. Varun has worked on integrating environmental analytics with design at firms including HOK and SOM as well as in his own practice, Merge Studio in New York, He has also collaborated with Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (CEA) researchers on novel pedagogical models for environmental design studios, and authored a chapter in Energy Modeling in Architecture; A Practice Guide, published by RIBA. Varun has taught at Harvard GSD and RPI (CASE) and is a frequent critic at the Princeton School of Architecture and U-Penn Design. He currently serves on the board of the Pokhrama Foundation, which is working on a net-zero school and providing K-12 education in a remote region of northern India.