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As Director of the Healthy Materials Lab, Alison leverages her practice-based experience as an architect and her knowledge and experience as a long-term academic leader to confront one of the more serious and often overlooked environmental challenges of our time: the health of the built environment. How do we make profound and long-term change to everyday design practice to create truly healthy buildings especially for those in the most need in affordable housing?  HML creates resources, educational programming, and prototypical innovative housing models for a new post petroleum world.  Alison is co-Principal Investigator of the Healthy Affordable Materials Project (HAMP). The Project is a long-term coalition of four organizations who work together to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment. She is also the recipient of multiple grants that support the work of the Lab.

Alison’s work draws from the long tradition at The New School University’s commitment to promoting community-based sustainability, social engagement, and environmental justice especially in her teaching in architectural design studios at Parsons. Alison is a registered architect who has worked in both large corporate architectural practices and as a partner in her own practice. She leads a team of designers working on the design and construction of a K-12 school in Gondar, Ethiopia, and worked with HML researchers on the design and preparation of construction documents for Elder Housing on White Earth, MN.  

She lectures widely disseminating current thinking within the field of material health.

Jonsara Ruth and Alison Mears were awarded the 2022 Women in Architecture Innovation Award from Architectural Record and they coedited the 2023 publication “Material Health: Design Frontiers”.