Towards Progress: The Healthy Material Lab’s Alison Mears and Jonsara Ruth on Harnessing Creativity for Radical Change
Portrait of Alison and Jonsara by Nicholas Calcott.
By Sydne Nance
Alison Mears, AIA and Jonsara Ruth are the co-founders of Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design, where they lead a dedicated research team focused on understanding how the materials around us affect both human and planetary health, advocating for healthier futures. HML’s current collaborative grants include NBRC grant "Strategic Forest Economy Investments" that conducts land-based research to develop replicable models for wood based worker housing, Vermont and the EPA funded grant “The Biogenic Building Materials project”. In their interview with Sydne Nance, Alison and Jonsara talk about the experiences that led them to develop this focus, advising those just starting their careers to keep learning and trust yourself.
SN: I really admire what you’re both doing with the Healthy Materials Lab and love visiting the Donghia Healthier Materials Library at Parsons. Congratulations on ten years! What have you and your team been focused on in 2025?
JR: Over the last year, we committed to bringing “Healthy” materials, products, and strategies into all aspects of our advocacy and education. We have always distinguished between “healthier” products, which eliminate the most toxic ingredients or take a step in the right direction, and “healthy” products, which avoid plastics or petrochemicals entirely. Healthy ingredients are regenerative, support human health, and are biodegradable.
Over the last year, we expanded our “Healthy and Regenerative” collections to seven categories, including Algae and Seaweed, Earth, Plant, and Minerals. This year, we have focused our events on plant-based materials, bringing together leading farmers, product manufacturers, and architects for discussions on scaling Hemp, Straw, Flax, and Mycelium. We hold these conversations in the From Field to Form series co-hosted with The Architectural League of NY.
AM: This year, I am also leading an HML team in the Strategic Forest Economy Investments grant, conducting land-based research to develop replicable wood-based worker housing models in Vermont. HML is also a key partner in the EPA-funded Biogenic Building Materials Project, signaling the federal and industry shift toward biogenic materials. Additionally, we are strengthening HML’s presence in Europe. With our colleague Leila Behjat, we recently launched HML GgmbH in Germany, partnering with manufacturers, materials experts, and organizations like Neo-Eco Ukraine, MAD Architecture Barcelona, and Non-Toxic Slovenia.
Material Health is still a new topic, and we continue hosting existing HML courses as well as developing new educational programming. We are about to launch our own Learning Management System to offer a range of new courses, including biogenic and carbon materials.
Zero-Waste-Bistro-Food and Materials from same sources. 2018. Photography by Michelle Gevint.
Now let's go back a little bit — tell me about why you studied architecture, and where.
AM: I studied architecture in Canberra, Australia. I was originally enrolled in a science degree, but my studies in environmental science led me to consider the impacts of building, particularly housing. This led me to change my degree to architecture in a school of environmental design.
Three years into the program, I interned at Mitchell Giurgola and Thorpe’s Canberra office, responsible for designing Australia's new Parliament House. At the time, this was the most significant building in Australia. The US-based team, who moved to Canberra, was led by Italo-American architect Aldo Giurgola. Aldo’s personal advice was to either go to graduate school in the US or spend three years traveling. I ended up at Columbia, drawn to GSAPP’s openness to multiple perspectives and its dogma-free approach to architecture. And I have not stopped traveling.
JR: I spent my undergraduate years at RISD, and later I studied architecture in graduate school. After graduating with a BFA in Industrial Design, I pursued my own artwork, worked for a Steuben glass artist, and spent a year traveling the world researching the tools and materials used by different cultures. Back in the U.S., I began working for Maya Lin, drawn to her dual roles as an artist and architect. My architectural interests grew, leading me to Cranbrook Academy of Art for a graduate degree in architecture.
Cranbrook’s verdant campus with its storied design history sits just north of Detroit, a city of vacant buildings and strangely rural city blocks. My architectural studies there were rooted in the materiality of the building and the social, political, and racial issues of the neighborhood and city. The studio approach to studying architecture, combined with immersive practice in a Detroit neighborhood was deeply meaningful and still informs me.
“This brand — our sunny north star — has helped us build a groundswell of hope in the industry, igniting belief that there is a healthier future.”
Tell me about both of your professional experiences before the Healthy Materials Lab. What did you learn that you still apply today?
JR: I spent over a decade designing mass-market furniture. I aimed to contribute to the Bauhaus ideal of producing well-designed goods at accessible prices and I joined Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. But after several years traveling to the factories overseas, I began to realize how the manufacturing processes were affecting the people who worked in and lived nearby the factory. The air, water, and land were polluted by the things I was designing, and this realization made me question everything I had learned.
Rather than leaving the design profession, I sought out companies testing better methods, like the mission-based, start-up Q Collection, dedicated to creating healthy, environmentally friendly furnishings. We created a line of children’s furniture, the first in the world to be Greenguard Certified, made of FSC wood, healthy finishes, and manufactured within five-hundred miles of our design office. Through this process, I learned from toxicologists, environmentalists, chemists, and air quality scientists. I researched the supply chain of each material, gaining more knowledge than our factory partners. I discovered children's asthma, autism, and neurodevelopmental issues are linked to their furnishings and interiors in their first one-thousand days. This research is fundamental to my work at HML.
AM: After graduate school, I worked at I. M. Pei, now Pei Cobb Freed and Partners. I then started my own practice with Stefano Paci, Paci+Mears Architects, focusing on small residential projects in the US northeast. I became the mother of two sons during this time, which changed my priorities. To accommodate flexibility in personal and professional life, I began part-time teaching in 1999, first at City College in NYC and then at Parsons School of Design. At Parsons, I taught fundamentals of three-dimensional form to first-year art and design students, realizing my passion for working with students.
Regeneration Flax exhibition in Aronson Gallery, 2024. Photography by Michelle Gevint.
Regeneration Flax exhibition in Aronson Gallery, 2024. Photography by Michelle Gevint.
How did the Healthy Materials Lab come about?
AM: I worked with adjacent offices as program directors, while Jonsara was a few years into her tenure as founding Director of Parsons' radical new MFA Interior Design program. Eventually as Director of the BFA Interior Design program, I needed to understand the Interior Design landscape separately but related to the BFA Architectural Design program. Jonsara provided context and perspective for the undergraduate interiors program within a contemporary context. We realized we had much in common and I had much to learn.
We reconnected on a short project for Michelle Obama's “Reach Higher” program for the East Room of the White House, where a diverse group of Parsons designers created an installation within two weeks for the new college access program. We also worked together on the Building Project Ecosystem from 2013-2015, bringing together developers, academics, architects, and government to optimize material resource cycles. In 2014, we began working on grant applications leading to a grant award in January 2015 and the launch of Healthy Materials Lab in May 2015.
JR: Upon the receipt of the grant and establishing the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons, we were faced with making something from nothing —both an exciting and daunting task. How do you take the first and next step? How do you motivate people in powerful professions to change their ways with facts that are full of doom? Understanding that common building products are silently making our communities sick, isn't the uplifting message that aspirational architects and designers necessarily want to hear.
Instead, we started with a vision of a hopeful future. Working with our colleague and notable designer, Lucille Tenazas, we gave Healthy Materials Lab the brand of a sun, an optimistic yellow dot. This brand — our sunny north star — has helped us build a groundswell of hope in the industry, igniting belief that there is a healthier future, and many have come to see it as a stamp of approval.
“Your ability to see the world differently — more inclusively, more equitably, more generously, more collaboratively — is powerful.”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
AM: We know that a better future is possible, yet we chose a difficult challenge: to create a new entity from scratch, founded on the belief that we could progressively reduce exposure to toxic chemicals in homes. We created novel education courses involving fifty-seven experts to explore the depth and breadth of material health, from toxicologists and pediatricians to green chemists, contractors, and EIJ+ experts. To establish our expertise and design credentials, we tested healthier materials in exhibitions, installations, and buildings to provide evidence that these materials could meet architects' and designers' specifications. Recognizing architects' need for immediate tools and resources, we created a vetted list of materials for them to change specs during projects, supported by our heavy research lifting and reliable recommendations.
Overall, our biggest challenge is to continue to raise funds to support HML’s design led research. Jonsara and I spend a significant part of their time working to secure funds from a variety of sources to support HML’s work.
JR: We started HML in 2015 without many precedents, and our strategies for shifting mindsets, to educating in a way that inspires change, were not always popular with our peers. There were times that our peers were doubtful about what we could achieve, and they let us know. Overcoming their doubts presented challenges.
This was another example of a time when our leadership collaboration, between Alison and I, was very helpful. It helps that we trust each other. We discuss almost everything. We’re not afraid of hard work and we’re not afraid of the unknown. We share the belief that we can push beyond things that have come before, we agree that there is a great power in imagination and experimentation, and that the iterative process guides progress. The disbelief from peers was the fuel we needed to push forward and used their doubts as guideposts in refining our approach.
Donghia healthier Materials Library, Raw Wall, 2021. Photography by Nicholas Calcott.
Donghia healthier Materials Library, 2021. Photography by Nicholas Calcott.
What have you also learned in the last six months?
AM: We should be more ambitious, and compromise less, and need to have diverse sources of funding to continue our work. Also, we thought our work was difficult before, but the next four years will test us to make the necessary change in building and will be more challenging.
JR: I've learned that our future goal — for all materials to originate as plants and earth — is becoming a reality. It’s no longer a future dream. There are many products reaching scale in the marketplace that are made of these regenerative ingredients. Material researchers have advanced methods so that there are now durable, viable products made from various parts of plants and minerals. Manufacturers are testing the biodegradability of their products before introducing them to market. It's very possible these products are on the verge of becoming mainstream, despite changes in our national administration. Our choices in design processes and industry are more critical than ever.
Who are you admiring now and why?
AM: The late Robin Guenther, an activist architect, she spent decades charting healthier materials protocols and practices at Perkins+Will. Her work was foundational for us at the launch of the Lab. Earl Pendelton, who is transforming residential buildings with hemplime in the Lower Sioux Community, is leading his community towards self-sufficiency by building healthy homes from hemp plants that they can grow on their land.
Hempitecture founders Mattie Mead and Tommy Gibbons recognized early on that locally grown industrial hemp could be used as an insulation that replaces plastic insulation. They raised funds to construct a facility to manufacture hemp fiber materials at scale and provide us with hemp plant based products that can be used today. This is a huge step forward in healthy material innovation and manufacturing and the company is now able to distribute its products across the US.
Healthy Materials Library at High Point, 2024. Photography by Chloe Trigano.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
AM: Trust yourself. Know that you can make a difference. Imagine new futures unencumbered by the constraints of a male dominated profession. Your ability to see the world differently — more inclusively, more equitably, more generously, more collaboratively — is powerful. Finding like-minded collaborators and assembling teams who want to work together is critical. We can’t address the problems of our time alone. And when you harness your creativity in this way, we can make the kind of radical change that our time demands.
JR: Always keep learning. Stay curious. Diversify your sources of new information. Listen closely to people from other fields and cultures. Explore historical methods and allow them to inform your current understanding. Collaborate with creative, curious, people who share similar values. Persist with your instincts. Believe in the iterative process towards progress. Resist believing others' doubts. Accept challenges that seem insurmountable. Nurture your imagination to see things that haven't come before. Share knowledge. And listen more.
I'm not sure my advice would be different for women, except to underscore the importance of believing in your own voice and having the courage to act on your informed instincts even in the face of doubt by others.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.