Anna Dyson: Built Ecologies in Formation

Anna Dyson is the Hines Professor of Architecture at the Yale Schools of Architecture (YSoA) and Environment (YSE). She is the founding Director of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA), a research initiative that integrates interdisciplinary labs across campus to collaborate on the research, development and deployment of novel architectural systems that are focused on the challenge of metabolizing energy, water and materials within architecture in radically new ways.

At the YSoA, Dyson has established a new model for PhD-level design research in Architectural Sciences which has received multiple honors for pedagogy, including the award for most innovative academic program from the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) and an Award of Excellence from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

Dyson has been directing design research programs that have competitively won awards and contracts from multiple sponsors such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), The New York City Dept of Design and Construction (NYC-DDC), NYSERDA, NYSTAR, NEXUS, and from private sponsors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the Baruch Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and others.

This lecture examines recent R&D from the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA) and its partners, exploring how novel techniques for architectural integration with broader ecological systems might harness local energy flows differently, to foster biodiversity and resilience. Aiming to move beyond conventional 'sustainable design' that merely blocks or limits natural energy flows, this work seeks to actively harness and re-shape them, by connecting emerging materials and biosciences with first principles thinking. Partnering with major AEC firms, we explore new interfaces between plants, animals and the environment to radically transforms the way we design future materials and built infrastructure to deliver energy, water and food.