Waterfront Architect: Indigo River's Dena Prastos on Drawing from her Greek Heritage, Designing with Nature, and Reaching Your Potential
Dena Prastos in Indigo River’s Upper Nyack Shipyard office.
By Julia Gamolina
Dena Prastos is the founder of Indigo River, a women-owned transdisciplinary design firm. A leading authority in the New York Harbor, Indigo River focuses on progressive waterfront architecture, resiliency, and climate adaptation solutions that seamlessly transcend boundaries.
Waterfront architect, civil engineer, futurist, climate adaptation expert, and entrepreneur, Dena is driven to transform the built world at the water’s edge. She is fueled by the overlapping of design, technology, community and nature. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Dena talks about how her waterfront focus emerged, learning what not to do in professional practice, and the power of creating thoughtful infrastructure, advising those just starting their careers to seek challenges.
JG: Tell me about your foundational years - where did you grow up and what did you like to do as a kid?
DP: My childhood memories are rich in wilderness and nature. I grew up in the great state of Alaska, which naturally gave way to my adventurous and exploratory spirit. As kids in Alaska, it was common for my brother and I to know how to escape from different types of bears, roll out of quicksand, and duck and cover during earthquakes.
Being born and raised in Alaska, to say that I deeply appreciate nature and humankind's ability to design, build, and create infrastructure in some of the world's harshest conditions, is an understatement. My admiration for nature, specifically water bodies, continues to grow in my practice daily. I believe it is by nature that we can learn, advance, replicate, and scale our actions to address goals. It is by nature that we can prepare ourselves most responsibly for the future. Living and working in the New York Metro area, it can be easy to miss "nature," but anywhere there is water, sure enough, there is nature.
Dena (Baskous) as a child in the Alaska Wilderness.
Dena (Baskous) with older brother, Thanos, at Canyon Railroad family Cabin in Alaska.
How did you choose where you started architecture?
My filter for college was first, a five-year NAAB degree and second, a Division 1 NCAA soccer program. Surprisingly, the list of schools that fit that criterion is short, and the list of coaches who allow their student-athletes to study architecture while competing at that level is even shorter. I’ve even had coaches offer me scholarships, contingent that I do not study architecture. I traveled to several campuses across the country on official athletic visits to meet with coaches and tour their architecture facilities; New Jersey Institute of Technology is ultimately where I went on athletic scholarship as I felt wholly supported in both my academic and athletic endeavors.
You then went on to a Master’s in civil engineering! How did you come to know this focus was right for you.
When I finished my degree in architecture, the economy took an unprecedented downturn, and I began exploring ways to diversify and differentiate my offerings. I deliberately chose to work on areas that felt uncomfortable and intimidating, like the more technical aspects of the industry. I faced my self-consciousness head-on by getting a master's degree in civil engineering. I then doubled down and began my career in the construction field with a heavy civil, self-perform contractor working on a design-build project, the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. I have since cultivated the knack for reframing challenges as opportunities. Now, I enjoy pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I push myself daily so that my future self will thank me.
“I advocate inside the architecture field to empower and expand our service offerings to encompass more of the built environment than just buildings...I celebrate architects who find atypical ways to assert their agency and believe it would do the profession, the planet, and society well to do the same.”
How did you start Indigo River? What are you focused on these days?
In short, I was looking for something that I couldn't find. So, I created it. In the spirit of challenging the status quo, I leaned into the distinct experience afforded early in my career through technical avenues. The theme that emerged was the waterfront. I found myself working regularly with marine and coastal engineers, often as the only architect, wondering where the rest were. I believe in being the change you want to see, even when it means being what you cannot see.
The waterfront is deserving of specialized attention, because the waterfront is a dynamic zone where nature meets the humanmade. This condition is one of our most vulnerable and heavily regulated typologies in the face of climate change with sea level rise, storm surge, and flooding. Nature is very persistent—it will always win. We must always be aware of the constraints of a place and design within nature and realize that no one can do it alone. Working with other disciplines is crucial, as understanding natural processes is an exceedingly complex undertaking.
At Indigo River, our multidisciplinary team, comprised of various types of engineers, planners, and architects, focuses on creating resilient infrastructure that can adapt as the weather patterns become more extreme and less predictable. Twenty-first-century practice calls for new, integrated perspectives on development, resiliency, and system-based thinking in infrastructure development.
I have thoroughly enjoyed focusing my career, and, by extension, my company, Indigo River, on this condition. As a river is a wide, natural stream of fresh water that flows into an ocean or other large body of water and is usually fed by smaller streams, called tributaries, that enter along its course. So, too, are we a company fed by individuals, heading somewhere greater. Our work integrates to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public, the planet, and the profession in the built environment now and into the future.
Dena at a progress site inspection of a seawall installation.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
I wish I could say that I had stellar role models and mentors within the industry throughout my career, but unfortunately, I have not. As wonderful and meaningful as I'm sure it is to have good role models and mentors, there is also value, perhaps even more, in learning what not to do and how not to treat people. It is unfortunate to be on the receiving end and experience this firsthand. However, if the empathy I gained through those difficult times yields a positive ripple of impact through my learned interactions, then the lessons will have been worth learning. In many ways, I've charted and navigated my own course, which has forced me to become bolder.
The responsibility that employers hold is not to be taken lightly; the livelihood and well-being of your team is in your hands. As a profession, we are licensed to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public — and that starts from within the profession. If we can't model it, what are we doing "designing" it? I experienced tremendous hypocrisy, unnecessary pain, and suffering, leaving me raw and vulnerable. I came very close to leaving the profession before deciding to launch Indigo River, but instead found the strength to devise a new way to expand the profession while offering a place of employment that I was looking for; one that is respectful and supportive of employee growth; one that values, cares about and advocates for the welfare of its team members.
I love what you said about our responsibility to the public — and that very much extends to our staff.
Another challenge I overcame in my career was in part engrained in me through my rich Greek heritage and culture. In the Greek culture, "Filotimo" describes an attitude toward fellow humans and humanity at large. It means showing empathy, compassion, and generosity without expecting anything in return, taking pride in doing what is right and honorable, and being humble at the same time. While I appreciate this in family settings where generous hospitality becomes a sport in one-upmanship through reciprocation, albeit without expectations, the value does not translate well to corporate America. And especially to being a woman in a male-dominated field.
Capitalistic America, particularly New York, is quite cut-throat and abrasive, especially compared to my warm "filotimo-filled" formative years. For example, I remember feeling bothered when I'd repeatedly received stellar performance reviews but no raise or promotion. My nature was not to ask; naively, I thought my work would speak for itself, and I would advance deservingly on merit. Meanwhile, I would observe peers, outrightly less qualified, skip past me in compensation and rank. I didn't understand, and once I did, it didn't feel right buying into the political game being played: that, often, these peers were soliciting and leveraging outside offers, asking for and even demanding what they wanted. As a result, early in my career, I often felt undervalued and unappreciated, despite my impact; this was very frustrating. Over time, I observed. I learned. I forced myself to speak up. And in some ways, I hardened. As a result, a big part of Indigo River's culture is rooted in valuing team members as whole people, including their value and belief systems, which whether considered coincidence or by way of the law of attraction, often aligns with and reinforces our core values as a company.
“The world’s climate is the bedrock of our civilization. Meeting the needs of society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries demands a paradigm shift. As architects we must design buildings, cities, and infrastructure systems as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating, self-sustaining system in balance with broader society and, most importantly, the natural world.”
What have you also learned in the last six months?
As a leader, you set the tone. You may be sick, having a bad day, or putting out a fire behind the scenes, but learning how to be present in the moment for your team and your family is an incredibly important skill.
What are you most excited about right now?
Most of all, I'm excited about the opportunity we have as an industry to course-correct the profession; to leverage artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality in our practice; and to expand the ways in which we impact through specializations in areas like climate adaptation, floating architecture, and space architecture.
Who are you admiring now and why?
Well, for starters, you, Julia Gamolina — for spotlighting, showcasing, and sharing the inspiring stories of so many wonderful individuals from within our profession. For documenting the history that we are making, that in itself is history being made.
Thank you Dena.
Neri Oxman as well, whose work is revolutionary and inspirational. She focuses on material ecology, specifically, biologically inspired and engineered design.
Julia Watson comes to mind too, whose work focuses on and celebrates nature-based technologies for climate resilience. This work resonates with me as I have developed a deep respect for the Alaskan Native cultures and the people who have lived on and from this land for centuries, particularly the coastal communities. We are borrowing this planet from our children and from future generations. We do not own it. And yet we destroy it. We take on debt with no backstop or well-laid plan to repay it. Nature-based solutions aid in bridging that gap.
Finally, I admire Kate Orff, who focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to the uncertainty of climate change while simultaneously exploring and responding to social and environmental justice challenges.
Dena at her floating GWO Offshore Wind Training School, TMI Waterfront Services, of which Indigo River is a JV Partner.
What is the impact you'd like to have on the world? What is your core mission?
I advocate inside the architecture field to empower and expand our service offerings to encompass more of the built environment than just buildings. Architects go through years of intensive schooling focused heavily on design thinking, followed by years of apprenticeship and mentorship before qualifying to be licensed. The term "built environment" refers to humanmade conditions. And while that certainly includes buildings, I firmly believe it also extends to other humanmade structures, systems, and features, viewed collectively as an environment where people live and work.
Food systems are built environments. Digital environments, like social media, are built environments. Social media's design nurtures addiction to maximize profit and its ability to manipulate people's views, emotions, and behavior and spread conspiracy theories and disinformation. These environments affect the public's mental health, safety, and welfare. Who is designing them? What qualifies them? And who is regulating these environments with the public's welfare in mind? I celebrate architects who find atypical ways to assert their agency and believe it would do the profession, the planet, and society well to do the same.
What does success in that look like to you?
The world's climate is the bedrock of our civilization. Meeting the needs of society without breaching the earth's ecological boundaries demands a paradigm shift. As architects we must design buildings, cities, and infrastructure systems as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating, self-sustaining system in balance with broader society and, most importantly, the natural world. Change in engineering, design, and planning is required in cities with their complex infrastructure of buildings, roads, waste, and energy systems.
My vision for our future conforms to democratic civic values; nothing is more important. A successful future will have designed solutions that respond to local conditions yet retain universal and civic values. One must think on the scale of the city to exercise a set of values and a responsibility to culture, society, and ecology. A thorough recalibration of the architect's craft will be required to warrant our involvement in more meaningful aspects of future-making beyond buildings.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Commit to your instincts. Develop confidence around your intuition. Take educated risks. Put yourself out there. Be unapologetically transparent and vocal with your goals and aspirations. Whatever your passions and curiosities are – they are your guides. Never underestimate flexing initiative to explore your curiosities. Find ways to marry your talents and your ambition, to find your purpose and leave your mark. There are no shortcuts. Find a way, not an excuse. Say yes, and you'll figure it out afterwards. No one else knows what they're doing either, until they do it. Obstacles and challenges are the agents of growth.