“Beyond Well-being” Newsletter
Contemplative Design Technology for a Flourishing Built World
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Discover how cutting-edge insights from fields beyond architecture can give you an edge in designing spaces of flourishing.
Explore fun and evidence-based Contemplative Design Technologies to transform design challenges into resources for your flourishing.
Embrace an expansive and interdependent Contemplative Designer self to create environments imbued with empathic imagination and meaning.
Beyond Well-being Newsletter Issues
Wright, Wonder and Embodied Walks
What is the “driving force” through which you can INTENTIONALLY tap into the “resonant frequency” of not just great architectural spaces but maybe everyday good or even blah spaces? It is WONDER. Yes, Wonder! Practice Embodied Wonder Walks everyday.
Here’s your challenge! Over the next few days, find a few moments to mindfully practice the steps that I have outlined for “Wonder Walks” in your everyday built environments and the sites of your current design projects and see for yourself what it can do for you and your design process and projects!
Momentary Design Minds, Mendel and Mathematics
Every second – every moment - of our design process is a “cause-and-effect” engine. Each “momentary design mind” is the EFFECT of a previous design mind and the CAUSE of the next design mind. Learn how these "three Ms" can empower you as architects and designers to direct the trajectory of your entire design process in flow with authentic confidence and agency, opening up creative paths that otherwise would have remained unseen.
Letters to and from the Built Environment
We are in an unending, ever-evolving dialogue with the built environment as architects and designers. How often do we truly tune in – truly listen - to what each partner in this dialogue is saying?
This is a conversation that is essential, timely and more than anything key to bringing about a flourishing built world. Read what the architects and designers are asking from the built environment and listen to how the built environment responds.
What people who have engaged in our Contemplative Design technology are saying.
"This is a groundbreaking process essential for all designers and innovators. The tools and practices were incredibly powerful to move through mental blocks, limitations and deepen my creative potential.”
Vellachi Ganesan, Lighting Designer, Associate Principal, Spectrum Engineers
“The techniques are new and refreshing, exactly what firms need right now. The methods are courageous and forward-thinking that welcome vulnerability and connection in the design community.”
Lucca Townsend, AIA, Associate, Sasaki Associates, Boston
“Contemplative Designer is working at the frontiers of architectural practice. The research and methods hold great promise in creating a profession that is more deliberative, reflective, and attuned to how architecture is perceived and experienced by everyone”
Michael J. Crosbie, Ph.D., FAIA. Professor of Architecture, University of Hartford
“Contemplative Designer has helped me bring back the joy of designing through methods to create beautiful and meaningful spaces. Challenges like burn-out, fierce competition can be overwhelming !”
Madeline Amhurst, Project Designer, Gensler New York
“Contemplative Designer’s framework is timely in a world speaking out against social injustice. We might begin to see a more humane built environment that reminds us of our moral obligations to one another.”
Earl Jackson, AIA, Principal, Earl Jackson Architecture Workshop & Associate Professor, NJIT
Designers have the opportunity and choice to go deeper into their own selves and begin to enact the old induction inscribed in stone at the entry of the Delphi Temple in ancient Greece: “know thyself.”Contemplative Designer goes to the heart of the matter.”
Dr. Julio Bermudez, Ph.D., Assoc AIA. Director of Cultural Studies & Sacred Space, Catholic University of America
Meet our Founder Sarika Bajoria
Hi! I founded Contemplative Designer and my design practice Sarika Bajoria Unlimited in New York City with the singular vision to bring about a world where everyday built spaces profoundly connect people to their environment, each other, themselves, and something greater than themselves. I realized that first we as designers have to make inner transformations in how we think and work and who we can become before we can bring about this transformation in our built world.
Synthesizing 22 years of practicing architecture at firms in New York City including Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Perkins & Will and my own firm and 16 years of teaching contemplative practice along with research in diverse fields, I have developed very practical and evidence-based design tools for you, my fellow practicing designers and students, to transform your challenges and burnout into resources for empathic imagination and meaning. As Adjunct Professor at Parsons School of Design I bring this unique framework for contemplative design to the classroom. My research involves quantifying the impact of this unique pedagogy on the design process, designers and project outcomes.
My work has been recognized with several awards including “Building Design+Construction 40 under 40” and “Engineering News Record New York Top 20 under 40” . I designed for underserved communities as Founding Director for Architecture for Humanity New York and serve as a fellow at the Center for Conscious Design. I obtained my Masters in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and Bachelor of Arts in Physics, Math and Art from Luther College, Iowa.