Design the Future

Stacy Glass, co-founder of ChemFORWARD, passionately tackles the issue of toxic chemical exposure. She emphasizes the need for a world where all chemicals are vetted and hazardous ones eliminated. The conversation dives into the significance of consumer advocacy and smarter product choices to avoid ‘regrettable alternatives.’ Stacy discusses innovative collaborations among industries to enhance chemical safety, aiming for measurable progress. She urges future leaders, especially millennials and Gen Z, to take on the mission of transforming our chemical landscape.

Kaarin Knudson is an architect, a writer, and an educator with more than 25 years’ experience in design, sustainability, and community building. Trained as a journalist before becoming an architect, her work has always focused on people and place. In 2017, after a decade in architectural practice, she organized the public-interest project Better Housing Together to address Lane County’s housing crisis. This work supported the creation of Eugene’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Lane County’s first Affordable Housing Action Plan, and Oregon’s landmark middle housing reforms. In 2024, she was elected as Mayor of Eugene, Oregon, with 73% of the primary vote and 96% in the general election. Kaarin teaches planning and urban design at the University of Oregon, and she speaks at regional and national conferences about sustainable cities, housing, and the work of guiding community change. She is co-author, with Nico Larco, of The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook (2024).We discussed what this moment is calling us all to do. “I think we are building new muscles and new relationships and new patterns of behavior with one another,” she said. “This is challenging us to think about how to work in different ways and how to stay focused on the future that we want to build. The framing of the problem is going to determine the solutions. We have to be the people who are framing the problem in a way that allows the solutions to be more connected, more productive, more about advancing into this future together.” 

Kayleigh Houde, Associate Principal and Global Computational Projects Lead at Buro Happold, shares her expertise on computational engineering and its impact on climate progress. She discusses the significance of embodied carbon in MEP systems and introduces a pivotal guide for practitioners. Kayleigh emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, stating that computation is a tool for enhancing human connectivity in climate initiatives. She also touches on the role of AI in addressing carbon emissions, reinforcing the need for responsible technology in sustainable practices.

As the Head of Sustainability for Henning Larsen, Kritika Kharbanda spearheads the global sustainability team’s initiatives, goals, and growth. She serves on the ULI New York’s Climate and Sustainability Council and is the co-chair for AIA New York’s Building Science Committee. We talked about her journey from India to Japan, Denmark, and the U.S. We discussed storytelling and negotiations; evidence-based design; and her role with Pathways AI,a climate-tech startup using AI to automate Environmental Product Declarations; and her Substack. We also asked her about whether she feels like she’s a part of an industry or a movement (a question that feels more important now than it has since we began asking it in our first episodes in early 2020). “If I were just part of an industry,” she says, “I’d probably be doing my nine to six, designing buildings, and calling it a day. But in my head and heart, I feel called to join with others in learning and collaboration and advocacy. We are building relationships and working together toward tangible outcomes. This is a movement. I am part of it, and I think everyone should be a part of it, because just being part of the industry is not enough anymore.” 

As VP of Building Resilient Futures at Enterprise Community Partners, Krista Egger stewards the nonprofit’s national environmental programs, including Green Communities, Health Action Plan, Resilience Academies, and Decarbonization Hubs. Krista went to Oberlin and and studied physics and architectural history. After college, a stint with AmeriCorps introduced her to a kind of applied building science. “I had the opportunity to identify root causes and then make things better,” she says.  Sometimes making things better means dismantling long-held beliefs. “For too long,” she says, “there has been a perceived predicament of whether people can build affordable housing or green housing, whether there can be a standard way to operate buildings or green ways of operating buildings. Those are false choices.”The programs that Egger leads are leveraging capital and policy and resources to solve for barriers that prevent all housing from being affordable, healthy, and resilient. “We are centering the needs of people who live in housing to make decisions about housing.”related links:Health Action Plan framework Green Communities Criteria

Dr. Upali Nanda is Partner and Executive Vice President at HKS. As the firm’s Global Sector Director, Innovation, she oversees HKS’s Research, Advisory, Sustainable Design and Cities & Communities services. Based in Ann Arbor, Upali has extensive experience leading research projects in design practice with a focus on the impact of design on human health and perception. Upali believes that the big problems will be solved by getting many disciplines together in conversation. One example, the FDA Home as a Health Hub Idea Lab, brought together housing designers, developers, technology developers, investors, healthcare providers, and others. All such work is rooted in Upali’s deep commitment to the integration of research into practice. That commitment has prompted to her to ask deep questions about people and place. “How can we design for humans without knowing how humans are designed?” she asks. “That question got me interested in how humans perceive and behave, and then over time, that evolved into this interest in human health itself.” 

Shannon Goodman is the Executive Director of the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta, which has redirected nearly 13 million pounds of usable materials away from landfills and generated over $6 million in community savings, including 450 in-kind material grants to nonprofits. Shannon also serves as Board President for the nonprofit Build Reuse, representing reuse-focused organizations across the U.S. We talked to her about running a nonprofit and about the changes afoot in the AEC field. “We are in the midst of a massive mind shift,” she says. “It's only going to work if people actually see that there is value. We have to stop thinking about these materials as waste. They are resources.”Shannon’s vision for the reuse work is that “the entire process of what we do gets really sexy for people,” she says. “I look forward to a time when people are compelled by the stories they are hearing of what has been saved and reused. They will think, ‘I want a piece of that for my work.’ That is only going to happen if we make it really easy to tell those stories.”

Jonsara Ruth is co-founder and Design Director of Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design, where she is an Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design program. Alison Mears is Associate Professor of Architecture, Director and Co-Founder of HML and Director/Co-Founder of HML EU. Alison and Jonsara published “Material Health:Design Frontiers” exploring the intersectional and complex nature of material health. They also co-authored a chapter of The Regenerative Materials Movement (Living Future/Ecotone, 2024). This year is the Healthy Materials Lab’s tenth in operation. Alison and Jonsara’s close collaboration has been central to the Lab’s development and to its success in engaging people and changing minds and practices.“Jonsara and I have a lot in common,” Alison says, “including a drive to use our design skills in the service of a higher goal to produce place for people that meet all their needs. We want to raise the bar. And we want to invite people in to do this work.”Jonsara says their partnership works well because they have complementary skill sets and they’ve always been willing to hear one another out. “We value intuition and we respect each other’s experience. We are both committed to always learning and evolving,” she says. 

Meghan Lewis is the Program Director of the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), where she leads strategy, research and resource development to execute CLF’s mission to eliminate embodied carbon in buildings, materials, and infrastructure to create a just and thriving future. Meghan joined CLF in 2020 to lead their efforts to inform public policies targeting embodied carbon, from Buy Clean to building codes and beyond. Previous to joining CLF, Meghan was an architect and launched a global supply chain sustainability program at WeWork. We talked to her about embodied carbon (of course), changing practice, the realities of research, and translating knowledge to meaningful policy. “It's really important for people to remember that a lot of the progress that has been made was led by states and cities, and will continue to be led by states and cities,” she said. “Progress is not going to stop, but now there's an even bigger opportunity for local action. I recommend that people think about the groups they're a part of as part of how you think about policy in the next four years.” We talked about books, too. Meghan shared how reading science fiction fantasy helps her bring optimism to her work. 

Billie Faircloth, FAIA, is a design leader and educator who has transformed practice-integrated research and earned a reputation for demonstrating its value, methods, and outcomes. Billie was a partner and research director at the Philadelphia-based practice KieranTimberlake, where she guided the collaborative development of award-winning studies, technology, and architecture. As co-founder and research director of Built Buildings Lab, Faircloth represents the value of existing buildings in the public consciousness, global sustainability practice, and policymaking. She recently joined Cornell University as an associate professor in the Department of Architecture and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. We talked to Billie about the value and benefits of shifting platforms and about the richness of working across realms -- practice, policy, and academia. We asked her about the communities of which she is a part. “When I look at the green building industry, I see a whole range of communities engaging in movements,” she said. “They are advocating for decarbonization and energy transition or reducing emissions with embodied carbon, or advocating for supply chain equity or carbon neutral design or regenerative design. I see a movement of movements.”