At ICFF 2026, Metropolis Magazine’s senior editor, Francisco Brown, sat down with two leaders in healthy materials research to unpack a question the design industry can no longer avoid: what’s actually in the products we specify, and who pays the price when we don’t ask?
Jonsara Ruth, co-founder and design director of the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design, opened with a sobering data point. Human-made matter has now surpassed the planet’s living biomass, and most interiors are built from synthetic materials laced with chemicals linked to asthma, diabetes, cancer, and reproductive health disorders. “The exposure to our built environment is linked to 90% of our disease, whereas genetics is only 10% of disease in terms of its cause,” Ruth said, citing the Human Exposome Project.
(Francisco Brown, Jonsara Ruth, and Lara Kaufman | Image courtesy of Jenna Bascom Photography)
Image courtesy of Jenna Bascom Photography
Ask What It’s Made Of
For Ruth, the fix starts with a deceptively simple habit: interrogate every material.
“We just need to know more,” she said. “We need to ask of every material we choose or specify, every product: What is it made of?” That question opens a chain of others: Where is it made? Does it require an adhesive? Where does it go at the end of its life? Who’s affected at every stage?
Ruth pointed to a wave of alternatives now on the market, from linseed oil flooring and seaweed-based upholstery foam to mycelium panels and hemp lime insulation. “In 2026, there are many hundreds and hundreds of products that can be regenerative, or reused safely,” she said, adding that petroleum-based paints, insulation, and foams no longer need to be the default.
A Case Study in Actionable Idealism
Lara Kaufman, a design principal at Studio Gang who leads the firm’s sustainability task force, brought the conversation down to the scale of a real project: the David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University, a mass timber conference center built to the Living Building Challenge’s Materials Petal standard.
Jonsara Ruth (Image courtesy of Jenna Bascom Photography)
Every material in the building was vetted against Harvard’s Healthy Materials Building Academy criteria, and the design team traced its timber back to its source forests. “It’s really important to know about this so that we can understand how our project is influencing, or having an impact at the source location,” Kaufman said.
The payoff was tangible on opening day. “We overheard some people saying that it just smelled really great inside,” Kaufman recalled. “We didn’t have any of that new building smell, which comes from the petrochemicals, and other things that are kind of leaching into the air.”
Code Is Slow. Manufacturers Are Ready.
Both panelists agreed the biggest obstacle isn’t the availability of healthier products but the systems built around them. Ruth described a years-long fight to get hemp lime insulation approved under the Pennsylvania Building Code, despite the material’s resistance to a blowtorch held to it for 24 hours. The effort eventually helped shift the International Residential Code. “We need brave soldiers who are willing to put their neck out and do things,” she said.
Kaufman echoed the sentiment from the manufacturing side, describing the unglamorous work behind every healthy material choice: “Picking up the phone, calling manufacturers, and asking them what’s in their product is a really huge part of this. It’s person to person.”
Lara Kaufman (Image courtesy of Jenna Bascom Photography)
Specify It. Buy It. Make It Beautiful.
When asked how designers can push the industry forward without waiting on legislation, Ruth didn’t hesitate: “Specify it… buy more of it. Because the more we all collectively purchase, we have incredible agency as designers, separate from whatever government’s in charge.”
She added a final, pointed reminder for a room full of designers: healthier materials only spread if they’re desirable. “We can’t just use these materials, specify them, and say, hey, Metropolis, publish us,” Ruth said. “It has to be extraordinary. There has to be imagination, and beauty, and creativity in our application and our use of these materials.”
Kaufman closed on a similar note, framing healthy materials not as a compliance checklist but a design opportunity: smaller-scale residential projects, she said, are often the fastest place to build expertise and prove what’s possible before scaling up. “First, get a good foothold in what you can realize today.”
To hear the full conversation and explore the panelists’ insights in greater depth, listen to the complete session below.
Want to listen to other talks? SEE OUR 2026 REWIND PAGE >>>
