Felix Heisel

Felix Heisel is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Circular Construction Lab at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. He is a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and a graduate field member in architecture, systems engineering, and matter design computation. Heisel is a licensed architect in Germany and partner of 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB, an office specializing in the development of circular prototypologies. 

Heisel's scholarship focuses on a systemic redesign of the built environment as a material depot of endless use and reconfiguration. He has received various awards for his work and published several books and articles on the topic, including Building Better – Less – Different: Circular Construction and Circular Economy (Birkhäuser, 2022); Urban Mining und kreislaufgerechtes Bauen (Urban Mining and Circular Construction, Fraunhofer IRB, 2021); Cultivated Building Materials (Birkhäuser, 2017); and Building from Waste (Birkhäuser, 2014).

Heisel graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts and has been teaching and researching at universities around the world, including the Berlage Institute; the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction, and City Developments; the Future Cities Laboratory Singapore; ETH Zürich; and Harvard GSD.

Related News

• AIA New York: Circularity in Motion: Design, Policy, and Construction in Dialogue
• These Old Roman Buildings Could Unlock How to Build in a Warming World
• New Mui Ho Center for Cities Podcast Explores "Wicked" Urban Problems and Actions Across Scales
• Reimagining Informal Housing in Mathare, Kenya
• Town-Gown Awardees Foster Business, Community, Sustainability

Classes (Selected)

• Arch 1102 First-year Design StudioAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
• Arch 4619/6605 Special Topics in Environmental Systems. The Circular Economy: The Business and Science of ConstructionAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
• ARCH 4101/4102/5101/7912 Option StudioAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• German Green Solutions Award (2020/2021)
• Beyond bauhaus – prototyping the future (2019)
• MaterialPREIS (2019)
• Zumtobel Group Award (2014)
• National German Merit Foundation (since 2010)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Quo Addis? Conflicts of Coexistence, at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, 2020 Venice Biennale of Architecture, Italy (2020/21)
• Mycotecture and Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR), two permanent exhibition pieces at Futurium Berlin, Germany (2019)
• Beyond Mining – Urban Growth, at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, South Korea (2017)
• Daring Growth, at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture, Italy (2016)
• Waste Vault, at the IdeasCity Festival, New Museum, New York City, USA (2015)

Publications (Selected)

• Heisel, Felix, Caroline O'Donnell, and Dillon Pranger. "New Deconstruction: The Rebirth of a Circular Architecture." In The Architecture of Waste: Design for a Circular Economy, edited by Caroline O'Donnell and Dillon Pranger, 191–204. New York City, USA: Routledge (2021)
• Felix Heisel. "Reuse and Recycling: Materializing a Circular Economy." In The Materials Book, edited by Ilka Ruby and Andreas Ruby, 156–60. Berlin, Germany: Ruby Press (2020)
• Felix Heisel and Sabine Rau-Oberhuber. Calculation and Evaluation of Circularity Indicators for the Built Environment Using the Case Studies of UMAR and Madaster. Journal of Cleaner Production 243 (SI Urban Mining): 118482 (2019)
• Felix Heisel and Dirk E. Hebel. Pioneering Construction Materials through Prototypological Research. Biomimetics 4 (SI Proto-Architecture and Unconventional Biomaterials): 56 (2019)