Sonal Beri

Sonal Beri is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP and Design Leader at NBBJ’s New York healthcare studio. Educated as an architect and an urban designer, she has 25 years of professional experience in a wide range of building types and scales from urban design, super tall towers, iconic institutional and educational buildings, top tier hospitals in the US, private residences to exhibition design.

She has guest lectured on computational design at Columbia University, Harvard University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and on Urban Design at University of Illinois, Chicago. Her installation ‘Sonotroph’, showcasing the concept of responsive architecture was installed at Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of two concurrent exhibits, ‘Learning Modern’ and ACADIA.

In the context of India’s emphasis on higher education and creation of institutes of excellence, Sonal was appointed as an advisor to setting up and starting a world class design university in Ahmedabad with disciplines including Textile Design, Space Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Communication Design, Moving Image, and Architecture & Product Design. As a core faculty, she introduced new pedagogical standards in design with an emphasis on post-colonial innovation. Courses taught range from Elements of Design; Visualization & Representation; Techniques of Invention; Space Design; Classical Indian Aesthetics – Rasa Theory; India & the World – Comparative Art Practices; and Design & Materiality.

Her designs have won several awards including German Design Award, Iconic Award, IFAI Award of Excellence. She holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia GSAPP (2005), Master in Architecture from University of California Berkeley (2002), and Diploma in Architecture from Sushant School of Art and Architecture, India.