Tag: featured-press

Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities retrofitted its headquarters in Cambridge into a data-driven living-laboratory that will help us to understand buildings in new ways. The Harvard Office for Technology Development (OTD) discusses the value of projects like HouseZero and how it brings together research teams across Harvard University to develop technologies. Watch the video.

Smoke from wildfires raging in Canada blanketed the Northeastern United States this month, turning the skies an eerie orange. Responding to record-setting levels of pollution, officials around the region declared health emergencies. Advice to close windows and run air filters helped mitigate the acute effects of the short-term crisis, but the event also drew attention to how climate change is intensifying chronic air pollution around the world. Ensuring the safety […]

The push to prepare American cities and towns for greater climate resilience has become more urgent in recent years as scientific evidence of warming mounts and extreme weather events grow more common. Officials in many states, including Massachusetts and New York, are enacting new rules requiring developers and property owners to change or reduce the type or amount of energy used in their buildings, to incorporate certain construction materials and technology […]

In August, researchers from Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard and Harvard’s Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) at the Graduate School of Design, tested a new, exciting proprietary technology, coldSNAP, in HouseZero, the living lab that is also headquarters for the CGBC. The testing of the novel evaporative cooling tecnology was the latest research –  including physical and data-driven control algorithms – to be performed using […]

HouseZero was featured in New York Magazine in a piece written by Justin Davidson, who praises the CGBC’s apt headquarters and urgent mission. “Most other environmentally sensitive buildings rely on advanced machinery: hyperefficient air conditioners, motion-activated window shades, and so on,” he writes. “HouseZero dispenses with contraptions that refrigerate the house in summer or blast heat in winter. Maintaining a comfortable indoor temperature depends on an ingredient that most architecture […]

Forbes featured a piece and an original video on Harvard HouseZero today, praising the structure as “one of the most important buildings in America.” The author notes HouseZero’s audacious goals—to drastically reduce the demand for energy and make green living possible for all. Professor Malkawi is also quoted within the piece, explaining that “this structure is the first attempt for us to be able to understand the complex behavior of […]

Quartz featured a piece on Harvard HouseZero today, praising the building as a “locus of high tech architecture.” The author writes about HouseZero as an “alternative to sealed buildings,” noting that its new window system is a crucial design element that automatically adjusts—sometimes by the minute—to regulate ventilation and Co2 levels in each space. Professor Malkawi is also quoted within the piece, explaining that “the idea of disassociating yourself from your […]

Fast Company published an article advocating for the improvement of existing structures. “If we stand a chance against climate catastrophe,” the article reads, “architects, engineers, and the buildings they create will necessarily play a huge part in moving the needle–and not just in shiny new buildings, but more crucially, by retrofitting existing structures as well.” The piece features Harvard HouseZero, which is recognized not as “a cold or stark vision […]