Center for Green Buildings and Cites partners with Wyss Institute to develop cold-SNAP: an alternative cooling process that uses substantially less energy than modern coolers.

Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cites researchers collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of scientists and designers including members of the Wyss Institute’s Adaptive Material Technologies Platform and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) to develop an improved evaporative cooling (EC) system that can work efficiently in hot, humid climates and could replace with a much lower-energy option. The project co-leaders are Jonathan Grinham, D.Des., HCGBC researcher and lecturer at Harvard GSD, and Jack Alvarenga, M.S., a scientist at Wyss Institute. Alvarenga and Grinham, are also part of the Adaptive Living Environments (ALivE) group at Harvard, are continuing to refine their cold-SNAP technology with the goal of turning it into a commercially viable product.

The ALivE group is co-led by Martin Bechthold, D.Des., who is an Associate Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute and Director of the Doctor of Design program at GSD, and Allen Sayegh, M.Des., an Associate Professor at GSD. Bechthold and Sayegh are both HCGBC affiliated faculty, and Bechthold a member of the Center’s operational board.

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