Eric J. Cesal is a designer, educator, writer, and noted post-disaster expert, having led on-the-ground reconstruction programs after the Haiti earthquake, the Great East Japan Tsunami, and Superstorm Sandy. Cesal’s formal training is as an architect, with international development, economics and design futurism among his areas of expertise.
Cesal has been called “Architecture’s First Responder” by The Daily Beast for his work leading Architecture for Humanity’s post-disaster programs from 2010 to 2014. He has been interviewed widely on the subjects of disaster and resilience by publications such as The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Design Intelligence Quarterly, Architect Magazine, Foreign Policy Magazine and Monocle. He has served as a juror for various design awards and frequently lectures globally on disaster reconstruction, climate adaptation, and the future of design.
He has taught and guest-taught on issues of disaster reconstruction, resilience, and sustainable design at several of the world’s leading design schools, including the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Universite Grenoble Aples, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Washington University in St. Louis, and UC Berkeley where he served as the Director of Sustainable Environmental Design program. Most recently, he has taught in the Harvard Global Development Practice program on community-based responses to disaster.
Cesal is also widely known for his first book, “Down Detour Road, An Architect in Search of Practice” (MIT Press, 2010) which sought to connect architecture’s chronic economic misfortunes with its failure to prioritize urgent social issues.
Cesal also served as the longtime Special Projects Director for the Curry Stone Foundation, a U.S. non-profit which seeks to support and empower forward-thinking social impact design. There, he hosted Social Design Insights, a pioneering weekly podcast with the leading voices of the public interest design movement.
Cesal is the CoFounder of Design for Adaptation, and is currently working on several new writing projects at the intersection of design, climate change and artificial intelligence, and serves as a founding member of the Built Environment Futures Council.
Cesal holds a B.A. in Architectural Studies from Brown University, as well as advanced degrees in Architecture, Construction Management, and an M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. There, he was both a Howard and Joyce Wood Fellow as well as the recipient of the Jerome Sincoff Scholarship.