Hayley Eber: Digesting What Matters

A lecture presented by Hayley Eber, Undergraduate Architecture’s 2026 Degree Project Eminent Analyst

What does it mean to practice design as a form of digestion, taking in the discarded, overlooked, and systemic, and transforming it into new forms of knowledge and space? This lecture traces pedagogy, practice, and institutional leadership as a continuous exploration of creative practice, with each serving as a distinct mode of processing shared underlying material. It considers waste, infrastructure, and archives as raw matter, moving from installations that treat urban byproducts as design material to institutional archives that hold not only the discarded histories of a city’s built environment, but also its gaps and blindspots.

Hayley Eber (b. Johannesburg, South Africa) is an architect, educator, and the Executive Director of Van Alen Institute, a non-profit working toward more equitable cities through inclusive, community-driven design. She is also Principal of Studio Eber, an award-winning New York practice working across buildings, interiors, environments, and installations to expand the boundaries of architectural practice. Eber previously served as Acting Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, and the 24th Triennale Milano. She is a licensed architect in New York and holds degrees from Princeton University, The Cooper Union, and the University of Cape Town.