Principal Profile
Sandhya Sood, principal at accent is a licensed architect, exhibited artist, certified green building professional (CGBP) and contributing author of Le Corbusier, Chandigarh and the Modern City.
Sandhya brings an unusual expertise by integrating sustainable practices and place making techniques of the traditional and vernacular with contemporary architecture and urbanism and vice versa. This knowledge and experience has enabled her to have a successful practice for ten years in the US and in India, leading teams in alternative building technologies, hands on indigenous construction with low energy materials such as masonry and rammed earth and the design of ecological neighborhoods to foster community.
As a community designer at Urban Ecology, she presented neighborhood revitalization strategies at community workshops in Oakland. As a project manager at Fisher Friedman Associates (FFA) in San Francisco, she led technical specifications for the Peninsula Jewish Community Center. In India, she was an intern with Raj Rewal and later taught architectural design studio at the undergraduate level. An invited critic at universities and speaker at professional organizations, Sandhya is also a member of the Landmarks California and American Institute of Architects Northern California Design for Aging Committee.
Her research evaluates urban housing typologies for change in climate control, post occupancy habitation and cultural patterns, movement hierarchies and socio-spatial qualities of private and public open spaces in the investigation of a new paradigm of sustainable urbanism.
Sandhya has a Masters in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley.
