Bimal Mendis

Bimal Mendis is the Director of the Post Professional (M.Arch II) Program and an Assistant Dean. Mendis teaches an undergraduate lecture course, “Scales of Design,” which examines the role of Architecture from the human to the world, as well as coordinating both the final independent design research studio in the M.Arch II program and the summer program in Rome.

Mendis is a co-founder of Plan B Architecture & Urbanism, an award-winning design and research practice based in New Haven, USA. Plan B’s work ranges from installations and buildings to landscapes, urban plans and global models of urbanization. The firm’s approach applies architectural thinking, analysis and cartographic methods to explore new relationships between humans and the earth and to examine the agency of design at the planetary scale.

Mendis is the recipient of numerous prizes and grants for his research and work, including the AIA Latrobe Prize, a Graham Foundation Grant, Hines Research Grants for Advanced Sustainability, an AIA Upjohn Research Grant, MacMillan Center Faculty Research Grants, and funding from the Franke Program in Science and Humanities. Design awards include the inaugural J. Irwin & Xenia S. Miller Prize and the Modern Atlanta Prize.

Mendis has been invited to exhibit his work in biennials and galleries worldwide, including the Lisbon Triennale, the Venice Architecture Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial, the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale, the Chengdu Architecture Biennale, and the Eye on Earth Summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Exhibitions at architecture schools across the US include large-scale solo shows at the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture Gallery and the Yale Architecture Gallery. His research on urban development, the impact of population growth, resource consumption, climate change and design at the scale of the world has been featured in diverse forums including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio program Future Tense, Atlantic Cities, Bracket, Log, New Geographies, LA Forum and the Copenhagen Urban Futures Forum.

Mendis’ current research examines the coastline of Sri Lanka as an urban construct and sites of deglaciation in Iceland. He was recently awarded a research grant from the MacMillan Center for the project: “A Terra-Aqueous Urban Border: Mapping the Exclusive Economic Zone and its Spatial Conflicts.”

Before joining the faculty at Yale, Mendis worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the Netherlands and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects in New Haven, where he led and managed the design and construction of large-scale urban projects including the National Library in Qatar.

Mendis graduated with a B.A. from Yale College and an M.Arch degree from the Yale School of Architecture. He was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Zambia and Zimbabwe.