Ari Daman is the Founding Director of Public Landscape and Urbanism Studio (PLUS). Ari is an accomplished landscape architect and urban designer with a broad range of project experience throughout the world. Educated in India and the U.S., Ari has blurred the lines between different disciplines in his practice to address issues like sea-level rise and resiliency, ecological urbanism, and sustainable communities. His projects range from small pocket parks to large campuses, mixed-use projects, urban corridors and regional plans. He focuses on bringing out the best sustainable and innovative ideas to maximize the social impacts of his projects. In 2017, Ari co-founded the Narayanan Family Foundation with the goal of improving people's lives through investments in education, culture, and environment. The foundation has supported initiatives spanning landscape architecture projects to preschool access in India. The foundation has provided seed money for public space projects improving quality of life in San Francisco, established the Award for Excellence in Landscape Design at UC Berkeley to promote research in landscape architecture, sponsored scholarships to increase the representation of Black Americans in landscape architecture, and provided funding to nonprofits like Pratham delivering education to underprivileged children. The foundation also funds a research program at IIT Madras to advance the use of artificial intelligence to benefit society.In 2020, Ari Daman created Public Landscape and Urbanism Studio (PLUS) to align his design practice with his expanding philanthropic work through The Narayanan Family Foundation. The idea was to create a socially conscious landscape and urban design studio to provide a platform for a new generation of landscape architects and allied professionals interested in working on projects providing social and environmental benefits to a broader population.