Designing Sustainable Solutions for a Better Built Environment
Faculty Presentations & Bios
Thursday, April 2, 2026
6:30pm-9:00pm
Gund 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 making infrastructural choices in the present to adapt to near future climate impacts. Proactive planning is particularly important on the Gulf of Maine, where climate vulnerabilities, including rising sea surface temperatures and levels, are accelerating faster than almost any other ocean on the planet. The scenario planning methodology integrates probabilistic modeling, including scientific and engineering projections, to understand climate impacts on transportation, physical, and social infrastructure systems. Working across scales from individual buildings and low-lying roads on the coast to a regional perspective, this project develops a suite of resilience and adaptation strategies. These strategies are visualized in four scenarios for the future of infrastructural systems on the Gulf of Maine including reinforcement, defense, elevation, and relocation.
Charles Waldheim is the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of the Office for Urbanization, and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an American-Canadian architect and urbanist. Waldheim’s research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Cullinan Chair at Rice University; and the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Kira Clingen is a landscape architect, researcher, and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Trained as an ecologist, Kira’s work uses place-based scenario planning as a method for community-engaged climate adaptation design. Before coming to the University of Cambridge she was a Lecturer and the 2023-2025 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she taught core studios and a seminar titled Place-Based Scenario Planning for the Climate Emergency. She is co-founder of the climate design research collaborative, Apocatopia, and previously led regional and watershed-scale climate adaptation projects at the Harvard University Office for Urbanization. Kira holds MLA and MDes degrees from Harvard and a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and B.A. in Environmental Policy Studies and Asian Studies from Rice University.
Algae Foam: Science, Technology, and Impact on Buildings
The built environment plays a significant role in the climate crisis, contributing approximately 39% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme. For buildings, these emissions occur primarily in two phases of the lifecycle. The extraction, manufacturing, and installation of construction materials and systems account for 11% of global carbon emissions. Building operation makes up the remaining 28% of carbon emissions, which is dominated by the emissions generated when heating and cooling buildings. The expected electrification of heating systems and the incremental decarbonization of the grid will likely shift more attention to embodied emissions. However, during the decades-long transition, both aspects will need to be addressed simultaneously. As a potential solution to both aspects of this issue, this research team developed a proof-of-concept for a novel carbon-negative building insulation material based on algae. The research developed methods to stabilize microalgal biomass through biocharring, and to use this feedstock to create a low-density foam material without harmful blowing agents. This material may then be cast or 3D printed into its desired form. While a range of material characterizations are still underway, it is expected that the use of biocharred photosynthetic microalgae will lead to a system that performs thermally comparably with a dramatically lower carbon footprint, satisfying the demands of operational and embodied emissions for insulating materials.
Martin Bechthold is the Kumagai Professor of Architectural Technology in the GSD’s Department of Architecture and currently serves as the GSD’s Academic Dean as well as the head of the Advanced Studies Programs. Bechthold was the founding Co-Director of the Master in Design Engineering Program and is Affiliate Faculty at the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard. He teaches courses in design and research methods, material systems, and building structures. Bechthold received a Diplom-Ingenieur degree in architecture from the Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany, and a Doctor of Design Degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is a registered architect in Germany and has practiced in London, Paris, and Hamburg. During this period he was associated with firms such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Santiago Calatrava and von Gerkan, Marg & Partner.
Daniel Tish is a Design Critic in Architecture at the GSD, having previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed between the Materials Processes and Systems (MaP+S) group in the GSD and the Lewis Lab in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His work lies at the intersection of digital fabrication, computation, material science, and sustainability, investigating new design opportunities through the lens of bespoke materiality. The Salata Institute, the Center for Green Buildings and Cities, the Wyss Institute, and the Joint Center for Housing Studies have all generously supported his research at Harvard. Daniel was previously a Lecturer at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Daniel holds a Doctor of Design from the GSD, a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis with a self-guided special major in Sustainable Design.
Urban Natures, Technology and Politics
Climate change and its accompanying environmental challenges have contributed to making the presence of nature one of the fundamental urban issues of today. The green city appears as a rapidly rising urban paradigm destined to become even more pervasive than the smart city. Under what conditions is this paradigm realistic and what does it truly entail? Does it imply a deep rethinking of some of the categories on which we rely when dealing with cities and their transformation? With these questions in mind, this research project offers a critical investigation of two fundamental aspects of the presence of nature in the city, when we consider significant historical precedents as a way to better understand contemporary evolutions. The first aspect is the technological dimension of this presence. Despite so many current discourses about the self-sustaining character that natural elements should have in cities, these elements are inseparable from all sorts of technical problems. Furthermore, there is a tendency to blur the distinction between nature and infrastructure. A second aspect lies in the political character reflected by the presence of nature in cities. Urban nature is not only supposed to improve the overall health of inhabitants; it is also expected to pacify their social relationships. Epitomized by contemporary practices such as shared gardens and urban agriculture, urban nature seems inseparable from the way we live together, and from the social contract that is meant to bind us as part of a collective.
Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the GSD where he is also Chair of the PhD in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the relationships between architectural and urban space, technology, and society, from the eighteenth century to the present. Picon received science and engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique and from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, an architecture degree from the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-Villemin, a PhD in history and a Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
Outfitting Architecture: Expanded Comfort in Athens
The design research studio, Outfitting Architecture: Expanded Comfort in Athens, redefines comfort in architecture as an integrated system of social, material, and mechanical conditions. Traditionally, comfort has been understood through temperature regulation and spatial predictability; however, climate volatility, resource depletion, and evolving social structures necessitate a broader framework. This studio investigates how layering, specifically nesting, modularity, and textile-based architectural strategies can create adaptive environments that enhance sustainability while expanding occupant experience. A key component of this research is the studio’s travel component, which exposed students to the climate realities of temperate zones. From the cold climate of Cambridge to the temperate climate of Athens, the studio’s travel to Greece allowed students to study architecture’s response to shifting environmental conditions that are projected to shape much of the developed world’s future climate.
Jenny French is a partner at French 2D, an internationally recognized Boston studio run by sisters Anda and Jenny French. Their work centers collaboration across multiple scales, from participatory events and installations to urban-scale textiles and collective housing. French 2D’s work has been published widely and the firm has received numerous awards including the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award, an ARCHITECT Magazine Progressive Architecture Award, and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard. Jenny is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she coordinates the architecture core housing studios. Jenny’s research invokes architecture’s cultural imaginary, from haunted sites to creaturely clothing, and has been generously supported by the GSD’s Appleton Traveling Fellowship, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Harvard’s Center for Green Buildings and Cities.
Approximating Cradle-to-Cradle Metabolic Depictions of Urban Settlement Material Stock Flows
Entry into the Anthropocene Era will require heightened vigilance and appropriate action regarding the negative externalities of urban settlement and particularly those that are environmental. A useful way of identifying and analyzing these kinds of impacts is in terms of the metabolism of constructed environments. Among the few methods of doing this are stock-flow models and the use of Sankey diagrams. Effectively, this approach allows the link between technocratic sphere of settlement to be established with the natural domains of the geosphere, biosphere and so on. It also allows these links to be traced through to constructed outcomes together with forms of waste and recycling potentials and management. Over the past several years a project team under the direction of Professors Rowe and Doussard have developed such a modeling capability and applied it to settlement coexistences in compact urban circumstances, peripheral urban developments, informal settlements and to desakota areas. At this juncture though, the circularity of functions associated with the reuse of building stock is poorly described and represented. So, to is the approximation to ‘cradle-to-cradle’ as distinct from ‘cradle-to-grave’ understanding building settlement life-cycles. These two aspects will be the focus of this phase of research.
Peter Rowe is the Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. Rowe served as Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1992 to 2004, Chairman of the Urban Planning and Design Department from 1988 until 1992, and Director of the Urban Design Programs from 1985 until 1990. Prior to Harvard, Rowe served as the Director of the School of Architecture at Rice University from 1981 to 1985 and also directed many multi-disciplinary research projects through the Rice Center, where he was Vice President from 1978 onwards, and at the Southwest Center for Urban Research. Rowe’s research and consulting are extensive, diverse, and international in scope, including subjects dealing with matters of cultural interpretation and design, as well as the relationship of urban form to issues of economic development, historic conservation, housing provision and resource sustainability.
Saharan Ergscapes: Documenting Agroecological Practices in the Great Sea of Sand
Despite the commonplace image of the oasis as a natural occurrence emerging from the desert sands, most oases are agricultural landscapes, i.e., environments deliberately designed and built to produce food for human consumption. And while agriculture often constitutes a driving force in land degradation, in the aridest regions of the world, traditional agricultural practices sometimes lead to the rise and long-term establishment of vegetation at levels of abundance and intricacy that would otherwise not be possible. The object of this project is the vernacular oasis, that is, a system of spaces created in an environment characterized by conditions of extreme heat and aridity, designed for the cultivation of specific forms of life for human consumption, and whose evolution has been slow and mainly driven by the cultural practices of those people inhabiting them. It examines various ancient agricultural oases in and around the Grand Erg Occidental, a 30,000-square-mile patch of sand in the Algerian Sahara. Using drones equipped with visual and thermal cameras, we have produced footage of some of these oases, which we then have processed photogrammetrically to produce unprecedentedly detailed 3D models of their physical conditions. These models allow us to analyze and understand critical elements in their fine-grain configuration, such as topographic profile, irrigation patterns, vegetation cover distribution and density, and the thermal gradients and microclimatic conditions induced by the agronomic transformation of the preexisting desert geomorphology.
Pablo Pérez-Ramos is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core Studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. He holds Doctor of Design and Master in Landscape Architecture degrees from the GSD and is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM). Pérez-Ramos’s research focuses on the aesthetic and formal associations between design and the natural sciences, and is informed by interests in material culture, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of science. Prior to his appointment at the GSD, Pérez-Ramos coordinated the Urban Landscape Program at the Northeastern University School of Architecture and taught at the Boston Architectural College (BAC) and the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as regional planning coordinator for the 2025 Masterplan for the Metropolitan District of Quito, and before that, he practiced as a licensed architect in Madrid.
Big Increases in Housing Supply through Many Small Developments
Ideally, new housing units will be constructed from sustainable building materials, will be powered by renewable energy sources, and will offer energy-efficient heating and cooling. Minimizing the climate impacts of new housing will also require that new units be located on sites that minimize the need for occupants to rely on carbon-intensive modes of travel (such as single-occupant private vehicles) to complete routine daily activities. This can be achieved by siting housing developments in close proximity to activity centers (to allow for travel by walking and cycling) or in close proximity to public transit nodes. This research team hypothesizes that many such potential housing sites exist throughout a typical metropolitan area, but that they are underutilized because developers seeking to build housing at a scale that can generate an adequate return on investment find it easier to acquire and subdivide large parcels on the outskirts of an urban area than to identify a large number of non-adjacent small parcels on which a specific housing type can be repeated at scale. Relatedly, existing owners of isolated parcels that are accessible by low-carbon transportation modes may not be aware of the development potential of their properties. The purpose of this project is to develop a method that can automate the process of searching for parcels throughout a region (including multiple municipalities that may have very difference zoning regulations) that will allow for development of specified multi-unit housing building types. This will in turn allow the research team to identify types of small-scale housing developments that can by repeatedly developed as infill housing in the Boston region throughout a region to make maximum contributions to creating more housing, more affordable housing, and more walkable neighborhoods. The methods developed will be distributed as open-source software that real estate developers and municipal planners can use to repeat our analysis for regions throughout the United States.
Carole Voulgaris is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, where she taught courses on sustainable mobility, public transportation, transportation system planning, and intelligent transportation systems. Carole holds a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA, a Master of Business Administration from University of Notre Dame, and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Brigham Young University. Carole’s research focuses on explaining what influences individuals’ and households’ decisions on how to travel through cities, and how transportation planning institutions use information about those decisions to inform plans, policies, and infrastructure designs. She is particularly interested in the development and use of quantitative metrics to describe complex characteristics of the built environment, particularly those believed to influence travel behavior.