Lola Ben-Alon

Lola Ben-Alon is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she directs the Natural Materials Lab  and the Building Technology curriculum. She specializes in socially and environmentally sustainable building materials, construction practices, and engineering-architecture collaborations. Her research and teaching focus on natural earth- and bio-based building materials, their craft, digital fabrication, life cycle, supply chains, and policy. She uses quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the embodied, thermal, and operational impacts of low-carbon assemblies such as cob, rammed earth, and light straw clay.   
 
Ben-Alon’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Building and Environment, Construction and Building Materials, Journal of Green Building, and Automation in Construction. Her work has been exhibited at the London Craft Week, Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, the Indian Ceramics Triennial, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, the Center for Mediterranean Architecture in Greece, the Architecture Center Houston, the Material Matters Fair during the London Design Festival, and the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, and has been featured and reviewed at Metropolis, Designboom, ArchDaily, and The Architect’s Newspaper. In 2024, Ben-Alon was awarded the Architectural League of New York Prize.    
 
Ben-Alon holds a Ph.D. from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, a B.S. in Structural Engineering, and an M.S. in Construction Management from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Ben-Alon also completed the Curatorial Studies and Exhibition Design Program at the Technion. She currently serves on the board of ACSA’s Technology | Architecture + Design, and Elsevier’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.