• Faculty

  • Jonsara Ruth

    Associate Professor of Interior Design

    Email
    jonsara@newschool.edu

    Office Location
    L - 2 West 13th Street

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    Jonsara Ruth

    Profile

    Jonsara Ruth is co-founder and Design Director of Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design, where she is an Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design program.

    At HML, Jonsara brings creative leadership to the goal of improving the health of underserved communities through the transformation of design and material practices. At Parsons, Jonsara cultivates new understandings of design through her teaching, research, and convening experts from a wide variety of fields to explore and debate intertwined, cross-disciplinary topics at large-scale symposia and public events. Material curiosities drive her research.

    Jonsara is a designer, artist, and founder of Salty Labs, a collaborative studio improving human and environmental health through imaginative design. She has led creative and production teams to achieve award-winning designs and mass-produce the healthiest, environmentally friendly children’s furniture available in America to improve indoor air quality and overall health. Elevating everyday human experience is her underlying pursuit. Her designs have been published widely.

    She serves on the board of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, Mount Sinai’s Stakeholder Advisory Board for Community Engagement Core, and regularly participates as a guest lecturer at design industry and academic events. Jonsara was recently awarded, with Alison Mears, the 2022 Women in Architecture Innovation Award from Architectural Record, and together co-edited Material Health: Design Frontiers, released in February 2023.


    Degrees Held

    Jonsara graduated with a Master of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design.


    Recent Publications

    Material Health: Design Frontiers, London, Lund Humphries, 2023.

    HealthyMaterialsLab.org

    saltylabs.us


    Research Interests

    reducing toxic exposure through design, reducing global climate risk through design, sustainablity, material health, social wellbeing, ethnography, creativity, innovation


    Current Courses

    Materials & Performance
    PGID 5122, Fall 2024

    Future Courses

    Design Studio 4: Thesis
    PGID 5301, Spring 2025

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