Transforming Everyday Spaces into Opportunities for Wellbeing

Small interventions with collective impact.

CoEvol is a research and design initiative exploring how urban everyday infrastructure — waiting spaces, public pauses — can become conditions for the situated activation of brief wellbeing practices. Through a Research through Design approach, CoEvol develops the Wellbeing Practices in Waiting Spaces (WPWS) Framework: low-threshold visual interventions that invite people to practice mindfulness, appreciation, and compassion where they already are — without additional time, cost, or deliberate search. Founded by psychologist and independent researcher Carolina Cárdenas, CoEvol bridges clinical psychology, early childhood education, and urban design to make wellbeing accessible at a population scale.

CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLUTION PROJECT

“Activating wellbeing where people, spaces, time, and infrastructure converge.”

— Carolina Cárdenas, founder, CoEvol / Designing Wellbeing

COMPASSION

APPRECIATIVITY

MINDFULNESS

Urban Prototyping WPWS Framework

Field Explorations 2024–2025

Between 2024 and 2025, the WPWS Framework was explored through visual devices installed in high-flow urban infrastructure across four cities. Voluntary flow interruption (stop ≥ 5 seconds) was used as the observational indicator. Results from Amsterdam, Milan, and Barcelona are included in the peer-reviewed manuscript currently under submission. The New York Times Square exploration was conducted as an early prototyping experience; observational data were not systematically collected and are therefore not included in the academic study.

New York

Times Square

Amsterdam

Central Station

MILAN

Piazza San Carlo

BARCELONA

Passeig de Gràcia

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