Architecture Alum Jonsara Ruth and Alison Mears Receive 2022 Innovator Award
Jonsara Ruth
Congratulations to Jonsara Ruth (MArch Architecture 1999) and Alison Mears, directors of the Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design who received the 2022 Women in Architecture Innovator Award.
Architectural Record celebrates extraordinary women architects in their ninth annual Women in Architecture Forum & Awards Program on October 20, 2022. The symposium recognizes and promotes women’s design leadership and achievements.
As co-founders of the Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design, Jonsara Ruth (MArch Architecture 1999) and Alison Mears are creating resources, educational programming, and innovative housing prototypes for a post-petroleum world. Mears, who previously worked at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and is an associate professor of architecture at Parsons, also leads the Healthy Affordable Materials Project (within HML), a long-term coalition of four organizations that are working to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment. Ruth is the founding director of the Interior Design MFA at Parsons, where she is an associate professor, and runs the collaborative design studio Salty Labs, which seeks to improve human and environmental health by designing non-toxic and sustainable interiors, furniture, and objects.
Additional women architects acknowledged by Architectural Record this year include Hazel Edwards, Monica Rhodes, Jing Liu, and Carol Ross Barney.
The 2022 winners were selected by an independent panel of architects including Tomas Rossant of Ennead Architects, Mark Gardner of Jaklitsch / Gardner, and former Women in Architecture winners Stella Betts of LEVENBETTS, Julie Eizenberg of Koning Eizenberg Architecture, and Claire Weisz of WXY Studio.
