In our twentieth Mud Talks podcast, we listen to Lola Ben-Alon deliver her podium presentation "Pedagogical and Research Frameworks for Earth Architecture" at the Earth USA 2022 Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Download her accompanying PDF research paper here.

Lola Ben-Alon is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she directs the Natural Materials Lab and the Building Tech curriculum. She specializes in socially and environmentally sustainable building materials, construction practices, and engineering-architecture collaborations. Her current work focuses on natural earth- and bio-based building materials, their manual and digital fabrication, life cycle, supply chains, and policy. She uses quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the embodied and operational impacts of low-carbon assemblies such as cob, rammed earth, and light straw clay.

Earth USA 2022 was the 11th International Conference on Earthen Architecture & Construction hosted by Adobe in Action. More information about the conference can be found at www.earthusa.org.