Author: Aubrey Ashmun

CGBC Releases 2025-2026 Dataset Using Automated Building Data Process

by

The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) has developed an automated process that enables HouseZero®—the Center’s naturally ventilated, ultra-low-energy headquarters and living laboratory—to produce high-fidelity, minute-level operational data. The dataset contains one year of minute-by-minute data collected from 190 sensors and meters, generating millions of data points. It covers energy use, photovoltaic power generation and indoor environmental conditions, including air temperature, carbon dioxide levels and relative humidity. It […]

More

Scaling Climate Technologies in Buildings: From Data to Finance and Market Transformation

by

| This event will take place in-person at 12:00pm ET at HouseZero, 20 Sumner Road. Registration required (please email [email protected]). This lecture will explore how climate technologies in the buildings sector can scale from pilot interventions to system-wide transformation. It will examine the interplay between policy frameworks, data infrastructures, and financial mechanisms in enabling this transition. Particular attention will be given to the role of data and digitalization in improving […]

More

“The Power of Eco-Machines”

by

Discover more about CGBC affiliate faculty member and Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, and her CGBC-supported research in the article “The Power of Eco-Machines” by Rachel May. This piece highlight’s Bar-Sinai’s approach to landscape architecture—co-authorship with other species to design landscapes together—and details her novel, beaver-inspired method that integrates landscape architecture with environmental robotics to help restore degraded urban wetlands. […]

More

Faculty Presentations

by

Designing Sustainable Solutions for a Better Built Environment Faculty Presentations & Bios Thursday, April 2, 20266:30pm-9:00pmGund Hall, Piper Auditorium Climate Futures on the Gulf of Maine: Scenario Planning for Infrastructure Systems Climate Futures on the Gulf of Maine is a place-based scenario planning design research project that explores multiple plausible futures on the Gulf of Maine. The aim of this project is to assist decision makers on the Gulf in […]

More

“Toward an Architecture of Comfort: Jenny French on Climate, Clothing, and Collectivity”

by

In the article Toward an Architecture of Comfort: Jenny French on Climate, Clothing, and Collectivity by A. Krista Sykes, readers are introduced to “Outfitting Architecture: Expanded Comfort in Athens,” a fall 2025 studio at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) led by Jenny French, assistant professor in practice of architecture at the GSD and partner at French 2D. The studio, funded by the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities […]

More
"continously-becoming-home" detail shot of installation

“Resistant Data: Questioning Architectural Values in the Age of AI” 

by

“Resistant Data: Questioning Architectural Values in the Age of AI,” is the first essay in a series about AI in design for Harvard Design Magazine, written by Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti, assistant professor in practice of architecture at the GSD and affiliated faculty member at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities. In the essay, Christoforetti considers AI’s impact on design as well as design’s influence on how AI develops […]

More

“Thinking of Cities as Green Machines”

by

In “Thinking of Cities as Green Machines,” The Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney reviews the exhibition Urban Natures: A Technological and Political History 1600–2030, curated by Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and an affiliated faculty member of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC). On view at the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s […]

More

Human, Cities, Nature: Zen and Engineering Nexus

by

| This event will take place in-person at 1:30 PM ET at HouseZero, 20 Sumner Road. This event is open to Harvard affiliates only. Modern cities face a significant disconnect: buildings are often designed and operated as static entities, isolated from human life and nature. Inspired by Zen philosophy, this talk reimagines buildings as living interfaces where human comfort, urban metabolism, and ecological cycles intersect. People currently spend over 90% […]

More

Towards Foundation Models for Building Control

by

| This event will take place in-person at 3:00 PM ET at HouseZero, 20 Sumner Road. This event is open to Harvard affiliates only. Buildings cause nearly 40% of carbon emissions in the US. Of total building emissions, HVAC systems are responsible for approximately 40-60% and account for 15% of global energy consumption. Despite advances in artificial intelligence, most buildings still operate as inefficiently as they did decades ago. Building […]

More

“5 Lessons From a House That Generates More Energy Than It Uses”

by

In the NPR article “5 Lessons From a House That Generates More Energy Than It Uses,” Climate Desk reporter Jeff Brady explores Robert Fortunato’s “Green Idea House” in Hermosa Beach, California—a 2,150 square foot home remodeled to produce more energy than it consumes. Brady underscores five key lessons from the project, one of which emphasizes the importance of research and planning. As part of that, he highlights HouseZero®, the CGBC […]

More
Document