Ronald Rael
Ronald Rael, B.Envd; University of Colorado, M.Arch; Columbia University
Ronald Rael is an architect, author, and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley he was the co-director of Clemson University’s Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Research and Urban Studies in Genova, Italy, and coordinator of Clemson’s Core Digital Foundation Architecture Studios. He has been a member of the Design Faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, and a Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his Master of Architecture degree at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he was the recipient of the William Kinne Memorial Fellowship.
Rael’s research examines the convergence of digital, industrial, and non-industrial approaches to making architecture. He was the recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant for “Constructed Topographies: Earth Architecture in the Landscape of Modernity”; winner of the Architectural League of New York’s Deborah Norden Competition for “Wadi Hadramut: Cities of Earth”; and is author of Earth Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), which examines the contemporary history of the oldest and most widely used building material on the planet—dirt. His website, EarthArchitecture.org was ranked by MoPo 2009: Worlds Most Popular Weblogs on Architecture as among the top 20 blogs on architecture worldwide.