3835 Campus Drive
Architecture Building (145 ARC)
College Park, MD 20742
United States
This lecture is part of the SPRING 2025 Architecture Lecture + Event Series. This event is open to the public.
"Biogenic Building Sections"
Lecture by Paul Lewis, FAIA
Principal at LTL Architects
About the lecture:
Based on LTL Architects’ recently published book Manual of Biogenic House Sections, this lecture and exhibit presents a visually compelling argument for rethinking the material basis of architecture in a time of environmental crisis. Asserting that the most viable means to radically reduce embodied carbon in new buildings is to use plant and earth-based materials, this body of work demonstrates how this approach can catalyze new types of houses that reduce or sequester carbon, engage regenerative life cycles and create healthier spaces for living. Interlaced into the exhibit and the talk are reuse and biogenic projects designed by LTL Architects that use material assemblies as a catalyst for building form, organization and spatial seduction. These projects demonstrate our optimism about architecture’s agency when embracing biogenic materials in the move towards a regenerative future.
About the speaker:
Paul Lewis, FAIA, is a Principal at LTL Architects based in New York City and Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture. LTL are the 2019 NY State AIA firm of the year, have received a National Design Award and were inducted into the ID Hall of Fame. Their current focus is the architectural potentials of plant and earth-based materials which is explicated in their recently published book Manual of Biogenic House Sections (2022). LTL Architects are also the authors of Intensities (2013), Opportunistic Architecture (2008), Situation Normal....Pamphlet Architecture #21 (1998) and Manual of Section (2016) which has been translated into six languages. Paul received a BA from Wesleyan University and a M.Arch from Princeton University, and is a recent past president of The Architectural League of New York.