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Philip (Phil) Hawes is a sustainable architect whose primary focus with architecture is to create designs and structures that minimize the negative environmental impact that normally come with building and construction. He does this through efficiency and moderation of materials, energy and developmental space that are used with his projects. Hawes attended architecture school at the University of Illinois, and has a PhD in sustainable architecture, as well as, town planning. Hawes also holds a B.A. in architectural design from the University of Oklahoma. While at OU he gained experience by working under Frank Lloyd Wright. He has a strong passion for bettering the environment through his work, and wants to share this passion with others. Which he has accomplished by creating educational programs about sustainable-design in architecture throughout the United States, Portugal, and France, and has lectured on this subject in various other places around the world.

Phil Hawes’s most famous work is the Biosphere 2 Project, located in Oracle, Arizona. This is a three-acre habitat for various ecological systems to live and coexist together while being completely self-sustainable. It was created by a team of scientists along with Hawes and was home to thousands of plant and animal species, as well as, human biome habitats. Biosphere 2 includes tropical rain forest, savanna, marsh, ocean, desert, agriculture, and human habitat biomes. The project has two purposes, to study the ecological management on earth in order to use resources more efficiently, as well as, “to study the design of habitats for space stations and other planets.” Phil Hawes states that, “we were hoping that Biosphere 2 would be able to give us clues as how to better deal with ecological issues in the world outside, here in Biosphere 1.” It was named Biosphere 2 because it is a self-contained ecological system, much like the earth, being Biosphere 1. First designed and created to mimic earth’s complex natural systems, Biosphere 2 now operates as a research center for the University of Arizona.

His interest since Biosphere 2 has been to answer the question, how could you build an ecologically and economically sustainable society? Which has turned into his project the Ecovillage Design-Build that he worked on at the Maharishi University of Management. He later spent time living in New Mexico and now resides in Amarillo, Texas.