Celia Chaussabel to explore material reuse and narratives in architecture as 2025-26 Banham Fellow
Kelly Sheldon July 29, 2025
Celia Chaussabel, 2025-26 Peter Reyner Banham Fellow
For a quarter of a century, the UB School of Architecture and Planning has supported design work that situates architecture within the field of socio-cultural and material critique through the Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship. Named in honor of architectural historian Peter Reyner Banham – who taught at UB from 1976-80 – the fellowship honors his influential scholarship on material and visual culture as a reflection of contemporary social life.
This year, the School enthusiastically welcomes Celia Chaussabel as the 2025-26 Banham Fellow. Chaussabel recently earned her master of science in architecture studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has a bachelor of architecture degree from California Polytechnic State University. Her prior experience includes design roles at firms in New York and San Francisco, along with research work focused on material reuse, notably at Belgian cooperative, Rotor.
Four years ago, Chaussabel was living in Brooklyn and working as a project manager and designer for Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects. Her responsibilities included contributing to the Manual of Biogenic House Sections, a publication that examines the carbon emissions associated with the lifecycle of building materials and the benefits of using biomaterials as sustainable alternatives.
Simultaneously, in her free time, she developed an interest in “stooping,” the practice of collecting free, unwanted items that had been left atop her neighbors’ stoops, signaling that they were up for grabs. Over time, she noticed that certain types of items were consistently swiped first – particularly furniture and pieces that were still intact or in good condition.
But not Chaussabel. She was drawn to the leftovers, the ones whose purpose was more ambiguous. “They weren’t telling you what they were supposed to be,” she explained. “Somehow, because they were maybe tilted sideways on the street and isolated, I started seeing them as other things. There was some ambiguity to their form that, as an architect and designer, I really liked.
These two ideas – increasing the sustainability of building materials and the creative reuse of discarded materials – began to blend together in her mind, sparking a lasting interest in the creative reuse of materials in architectural design and their corresponding narratives.
Her portfolio vividly reflects this creative ethos, showcasing a range of inventive projects. Among them is a reimaging of materials as narrative-collecting “Objectiles” – or object-projectiles that accumulate physical characteristics over time that tell the story of their individual trajectories. There’s also “Legslie,” a table supported by an eclectic mix of legs crafted from found items such as wooden planks, rolling pins, and even some actual table legs. At Tecnologico de Monterrey, she worked with an undergraduate studio to help them design furniture for their school utilizing found materials and objects, creating innovative designs through improvisation, misuse, rescripting, and adaptation.
"Legslie" holds a collection of objects with characteristics that hint at what their past life was, while simultaneously providing an afterlife for all of them as bench legs.
The popularity of practices like stooping and thrifting reflect a growing consumer awareness around reuse, yet this mindset is not currently prevalent in the field of architecture. The primary barriers? Logistics, cost, and structural challenges.
Chaussabel explained the process. “First you have to go to the site that’s going to be deconstructed and take account of what can be dismantled and sold or reused. It takes a special kind of expertise to deconstruct those materials, and it takes a long time. Then there are the logistics of transporting and storing, all these extra steps that add cost and labor just to acquire the materials. And then on the other end, designing with it. Even though I find it really fun and challenging, the reality is that if you’re doing a large-scale construction, it’s a lot of time and labor to use what are basically unique pieces.”
To combat these challenges, Chaussabel hopes that her work will help to create a desire for reused materials from the client side. “Having worked at architecture firms, that’s where the money comes from,” she observed. “There’s where the decision-making comes from. It needs to appeal to clients.”
One key advantage of repurposing existing materials, as opposed to using new ones, lies in the richer and more layered narratives they embody. As Chaussabel notes, this concept should naturally hold resonance for architects: “Every time we design, every time we propose a solution, there is crafting of a story. It’s what we do already, so why not apply that to the narratives behind building materials? I always use this made-up example, but imagine a piece of wood that was in Winston Churchill’s yacht and now it’s used as a bathroom floor. Or the opposite – a rags-to-riches story about materials. To me, those are stories worth telling.”
Through "Stuff"-ing the School, Chaussabel worked with students to transform found materials and objects to construct a structure for future learning, stuffing their (own) school with expansive creative skills, novel forms of collaboration, and unexpected cross-disciplinary pollination.
Chaussabel will join the School in the fall where she’ll have the opportunity to instruct students, deliver a public lecture, and prepare an exhibition culminating from her research and creative work. She’s enthusiastic about participating in a fellowship with such a rich history and was especially drawn to the role after learning about the original and thought-provoking work produced by past fellows.
She’s particularly excited about the teaching aspect of the fellowship. “I keep picturing my future students,” she said with a smile. “I’m really excited to meet them.”
Drawing from her own undergraduate experience, she plans to integrate creative projects into the curriculum to help foster her students’ creative growth. “In undergrad, it really helped me to reach beyond studio for inspiration,” she reflected. “Doing other types of projects like drawing or creative writing helped – things that were less pressure than a studio project and more exploratory. You could have fun with it. This freed up my architectural work in a way that was really, really helpful. I would love to engage students in creative side projects and help them get outside of studio a little bit.”
She’s also looking forward to exploring Buffalo and connecting with its network of architects, designers, and reuse organizations. Even more exciting is the chance to dedicate time to her own research. “That’s one of the things that drew me to the fellowship – the chance to talk to a community of architects and students and designers at the end about my work,” she noted. “I think that’s amazing, and not every fellowship has that.”