Alison Mears

As Director of the Healthy Materials Lab, Alison leverages her practice-based experience as an architect and her knowledge and experience as a long-term academic leader to confront one of the more serious and often overlooked environmental challenges of our time: the health of the built environment. How do we make profound and long-term change to everyday design practice to create truly healthy buildings especially for those in the most need in affordable housing? HML creates resources, educational programming, and prototypical innovative housing models for a new post petroleum world. Alison is co-Principal Investigator of the Healthy Affordable Materials Project (HAMP). The Project is a long-term coalition of four organizations who work together to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment. She is also the recipient of multiple grants that support the work of the Lab. Alison’s work draws from the long tradition at The New School University’s commitment to promoting community-based sustainability, social engagement, and environmental justice especially in her teaching in architectural design studios at Parsons. She lectures widely disseminating current thinking within the field of material health. Alison Mears and Jonsara Ruth were awarded the 2022 Women in Architecture Innovation Award from Architectural Record and co edited the 2023 publication “Material Health: Design Frontiers”.