LANCE HOSEY

Nationally recognized architect, designer, writer, speaker, and advocate Lance Hosey has been featured in Metropolis magazine’s "Next Generation" program and Architectural Record’s "emerging architect" series. His independent and collaborative design work has been published widely and received many awards and honors, including winning the international competition to design the African-American burial ground memorial at Monticello, the historic home of Thomas Jefferson, in Charlottesville, VA. Until 2009, Lance held the position of Director with William McDonough + Partners, the internationally acclaimed pioneer of sustainable design, where he served as lead designer on a number of architecturally and environmentally ambitious projects, including the Museum of Life and the Environment, the Fuller Theological Seminary Worship Center, and NASA’s “Sustainability Base”. Previously he has worked in New York with the renowned offices of Rafael Viñoly and Gwathmey Siegel.

Lance’s essays on the social and environmental aspects of design have appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, Metropolis, Architectural Record, Architecture, and Grist, and currently he is a Contributing Editor with Architect magazine, where he writes the monthly “Ecology” column, as well as a regular blog. Recently he wrote the introduction to the popular Green Homes : New Ideas for Sustainable Living (HarperCollins, 2007), and his essay “Toward a Humane Environment : Sustainable Design and Social Justice,” appeared in Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (Metropolis Books, 2008). With Kira Gould, he is co–author of Women in Green : Voices of Sustainable Design (Ecotone Publishing, 2007), and his forthcoming book is entitled The Shape of Green : Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design.

In 2005, Lance founded the Just Building Alliance, an advocacy group promoting social justice and global fair trade in the construction industry. His research includes the “Smart Shade” concept (patent pending), a passive solar shading device that automatically adjusts to changing light and heat. In 2006 Lance won the prestigious Smart Design fellowship from the Michael Kalil endowment. Additionally supported by a grant from the American Institute of Architects, the resulting research, “Ecomorph: Self-Sustaining Form,” became the premise for The Shape of Green.

Lance’s mother and father grew up on multi-generation farms in Nebraska and Arkansas, and he is the first generation on both sides to know nothing about pushing a plow or milking a cow. He mourns the loss of belonging to the land, but he’s glad his hands aren’t like leather mitts. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Lance studied jazz saxophone and composition at the High School for the Performing Arts. Succumbing to wanderlust, he went off to study architecture at Columbia and Yale, but his craving for a decent enchilada still keeps him up at night.

The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design

Great design is a marriage of art and science, but so far green design has focused on science and neglected art. Does sustainability change the face of design or merely its content? Can we be as smart about the way things look as we are about how they’re made? The Shape of Green examines how form and image can enhance conservation and comfort at every scale of design, including products, furniture, interiors, architecture, landscape and communities. Taking the principles of ecology to their inevitable conclusion could spark a revolution in aesthetics as well as ethics.