Hospitality Design - Marketplace Fall 2022 - 23

perspectives on our radar
By Alissa Ponchione and Will Speros
CUTTING EDGE
It's no secret that healthy materials are the next frontier
of sustainable product design. Meet six designers who
are raising the bar on what that means.
JONSARA RUTH
Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design
With degrees in industrial design and architecture,
Jonsara Ruth began her career designing mass
produced furniture when she learned how unhealthy
the manufacturing process can be for the environment.
Now, as cofounder and design director of the Healthy
Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design at the New
School in New York (she is also the founding director of
the school's MFA Interior Design program), Ruth works
with director and cofounder Alison Mears to educate
designers on how to create healthy communities.
Why did you and Alison Mears decide to launch
the Healthy Materials Lab?
I started teaching interior design at Parsons while I was
still designing children's furniture. [Parsons] learned
about my work and asked me to launch a new graduate
program at the New School [in 2009] that focused on
making healthier and more sustainable interiors. We
started the Healthy Materials Lab in 2015 with a group
of people who were thinking about the whole ecosystem
of buildings and how we can make them healthier
through architecture and design.
How do you work with manufacturers to
understand what goes into their products?
We make the analogy to food. The FDA requires
a nutrition label on food packaging, but that's
not a requirement for building products. We ask
manufacturers to give us a list of what ingredients go
into making their product. They may have already filled
out a Health Product Declaration (HPD). These are like
nutrition labels for building products. Once we know
what's in the product, then we can determine how the
ingredient affects human health.
The team at the Parsons School
of Design's Healthy Materials Lab
researches materials like hemp
Hemp can be mixed with lime
and used as a building material
The library at the Healthy Materials Lab
comprises more than 2,000 samples
What materials are on your radar?
There are a bunch of products made of different kinds
of regenerative materials, which means they can grow
and biodegrade like plants. We've been very interested
in hemp as an ingredient for building materials and
mixing it with lime to make insulation. We're also
looking at mushrooms and mycelium. It is a super cool
material that can be used for acoustical insulation,
flooring, and ceiling tiles.
What steps can designers take to specify
healthier products?
We're always advocating for people to ask why-what
is it made of, how does it get to be that way, is it safe to
use? We offer courses in material health that people
can take for continuing education credits. But the
biggest problem in our country is regulation. Some
countries like Norway don't have this problem because
they regulate their chemicals. Because the U.S. won't
regulate harmful chemicals, it puts the onus on us as
designers and architects [to learn about these toxins].
The solution isn't totally clear. We're still figuring out
the best way to get people aware of these things.
hospitalitydesign.com Marketplace Fall 2022
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Photos by NICHOLAS CALCOTT
http://www.hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - Marketplace Fall 2022

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