Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to introduce Sanjoy Mazumdar. Prof. Mazumdar is one
of the working designers on the committee that developed the proposal
for the University of California Irvine School of Design. While the
University of California at Irvine has yet to build a design school,
it now offers several design programs as well as design research
centers, and design departments located in existing schools. Sanjoy
works in one of them.

Sanjoy Mazumdar was trained as an architect. After taking an M.Arch.
and M.C.P., he earned PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Prof. Mazumdar teaches in the Department of Planning, Policy, and
Design in the School of Social Ecology. A truly interdisciplinary
scholar, he is also affiliated with the departments of Environmental
Analysis and Design, Asian American Studies, and Religious Studies.

Dr. Mazumdar pursue several areas of research, often writing in
collaboration with Dr. Shampa Mazumdar. One research focus involves
the interrelationships between cultures and their physical
environments. According to Sanjoy's home page, this includes
"organizational cultures and built environments, organizational
ecology, physical and formative contexts of work, office buildings,
ethnic and geographical cultures and subcultures and their vernacular
architecture, social aspects of designed and built environments,
culturally programmed environmental behaviors."

As a professor in a department of planning, policy, and design, he
also works with pragmatic and policy oriented questions related to
cultural responsiveness of architecture, and policy implications of
design related interventions in social systems.

As a design researcher, Dr. Mazumdar studies and develops qualitative
research methods and studies comparative methodology. He has a
special emphasis on ethnographic research. As an interdisciplinary
scholar, Sanjoy Mazumdar has published widely, and his contributions
demonstrate the potential value of design research to a wide range of
fields, from architecture and urban studies to religious studies and
social ecology.

A visit to Sanjoy's home page reveals a selection of articles linked
by a rich sense of how the cultures and environments that we build
shape and affect our lives: "Intergroup Social Relations and
Architecture:  Vernacular Architecture and Issues of Status, Power,
and Conflict,"  "Sacred Space and Place Attachment," "How Birds of a
Feather Flock Together in Organizations:  The Phenomena of
Socio-Physical Congregation and Distancing," "How Programming Can
Become Counterproductive:  An Analysis of Approaches to Programming,
" "Ethical Dilemmas in Urban Design:  The Humpty Dumpty Phenomenon."

If this broad yet focused interdisciplinary approach interests you as
much as it interests me, you will enjoy visiting Prof. Mazumdar's
home page at:

http://www.seweb.uci.edu/faculty/mazumdar.html

Sanjoy Mazumdar is past Chair of the Environmental Design Research
Association (EDRA) and current co-Chair of the Cultural Aspects of
Design Network (CADN).

Welcome, Sanjoy!




--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
Faculty of Art, Media, and Design
Staffordshire University