Community-Based Responses to Disaster

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 foreign policy 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, Architect Magazine, Foreign Policy Magazine, and Monocle. He has served as a juror for various design awards and frequently lectures globally on disaster reconstruction, resilience, and climate adaptation. Cesal is also widely known for his book, Down Detour Road, An Architect in Search of Practice (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2010), which sought to connect architecture's chronic economic misfortunes with its failure to prioritize urgent social issues. He has taught and guest-taught at several of the world's leading design schools, including the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Universite Grenoble Aples, and Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently, he taught at the College of Design at University of California Berkeley, where he hosted studios and seminars on contemporary issues in disaster reconstruction, resilience, and sustainable design. There, he concurrently served as the director of sustainable environmental design, supervising the sustainable environmental design major program. Cesal holds a BA in architectural studies from Brown University, as well as advanced degrees in architecture, construction management, and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a Howard and Joyce Wood Fellow as well as the recipient of the Jerome Sincoff Scholarship.