ENVD Lecture Series: Ronald Rael on Architecture at the Frontier of Art and Technology

Join us on Nov. 18 at 12:20 p.m. in ENVD 134 for our final lecture of the 2026 ENVD Lecture Series! ENVD alumni Ronald Rael will be speaking about "Architecture at the Frontier of Art and Technology".

Professor Ronald Rael is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture in the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design, and is also a member of the art faculty in the Department of Art Practice at the University of California Berkeley. His past leadership roles have included serving as Department Chair, Director of the Masters of Architecture, and Director of the Masters of Advanced Architectural Design programs.

He is distinguished as being both a Bakar and Hellman Fellow, and directs the printFARM Laboratory. His research interests connect indigenous and traditional material practices to contemporary technologies and issues and he is considered to be a design activist, author, and thought leader within the topics of additive manufacturing, borderwall studies, and earthen architecture. The London Design Museum awarded his creative practice, Rael San Fratello, (with architect Virginia San Fratello), the Beazley Award in 2021 for the design of the year, one of the most prestigious awards in design internationally. In 2014 his practice was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York—one of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. Rael is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (University of California Press 2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico.