Sameera Chukkapalli Holmes
Visiting Associate Professor

Biography
Sameera Chukkapalli Holmes is an Obama Leader and the founder and director of Needlab, a nonprofit organization that works to solve habitat and resilience problems in cities and rural areas. Needlab works with communities worldwide to develop human and environmental-centered architectural design solutions. Needlab’s mission is to research, build, and advocate for dignity in design and self-sufficiency in communities.They have completed 52 projects on four continents, directly impacting over 5,000 individuals.
She is the youngest architect to participate in “Barcelona Design Week”, and one among the 3 selected architects to display sustainable housing solutions at the 1st UN-Habitat Assembly. She spends most of her time drafting human and environment-centered design solutions with communities around the world. Currently, she is driven toward solving the UN Sustainable development Goals and making sustainable design solutions reachable to all and teaching graduate students at NYU and Pratt Institute in New York.
Education
MAA, 2016, Architecture, IAAC
Publications and Projects
The HOUSE for ALL of the NGO ‘Needlab’: sustainable and self-sufficient – Architecture Digest, July 2020, https://www.revistaad.es/arquitectura/articulos/casa-para-todos-ong-needlab-sostenible-autosuficiente/26584