Design the Future

Through her consultancy, AIRLIT studio, Alejandra Menchaca provides expertise in mechanical engineering and building science to owners and design teams. One of her current projects will be the first performing arts facility in the US with full natural ventilation.  Ale holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and has taught at MIT and Harvard GSD, where she has mentored, she says, “several brilliant students who have become inspiring disruptors in the building simulation industry. That’s immensely rewarding.”We talked to Ale about growing up in Mexico and her shift from aerospace engineering  to environmental stewardship and building science and her time at Payette and Thornton Tomasetti before starting her own firm. Ale co-founded Project StaSIO, a community of building performance simulators (consultants, architects, in-house building scientists) that strives to teach others how to ask the right building analytics questions and convey the results in ways that are beautiful and impactful (not tables!).When we asked whether she feels like she’s part of a movement, Ale didn’t hesitate: “If speaking up and disagreeing with the status quo is being part of the movement, I'm definitely a member..” 

Victoria Burrows is a manager of portfolio development and industry partnerships at Kompas, an early-stage venture capital firm backing innovations for decarbonizing the built environment and manufacturing. Decarbonization has been the focus of Victoria’s career to date (her prior role was leading Advancing Net Zero at the World Green Building Council), and she lives it, too. She is renovating her own net zero home in France. Victoria is  excited to be working in venture capital right now because, she says, "the market needs a suite of solutions for every part of the problem -- solutions that are cost effective and reduce emissions. I’m energized to be on the ‘how’ side of things, helping to bring these solutions to fruition.”Through Kompas, she is advancing innovations towards decarbonization that include technology such as AI and robotics to increase efficiency throughout the value chain. “I think the private sector has a responsibility to operate well in advance of regulation to prove the possible and show it can be done,” she says. This is part of creating confidence in governments so that they can set policy roadmaps and regulations. Activating the flow of sustainable finance to the solutions is critical. I want to see all finance linked to performance outcomes.”

Ariane Laxo is Sustainability Director at HGA, an architecture and engineering firm of 1,000 people in 12 offices. We talked to Ariane about her work, what she draws on to lead, and how she finds strength in the purpose of sustainability. She advises others to listen to the curiosity that pulls them and cultivate an introspective mindset. In addition to stewarding projects at HGA that demonstrate a holistic approach to design and deeply integrated sustainability, Ariane is also working on change management at the firm, which includes cultivating an inclusive culture and a distributed network of intelligence around sustainability, equity, and community action. The company has prioritized transparency and and is engaged in research internally and with outside partners.Ariane appreciates the progress she is seeing in transdisciplinary thinking and would like to see greater advancement toward a circular economy in the building industry. “I hope that 200 years from now, historians will look at this moment as the fulcrum, the moment everything changed,” she says. “We are shaping a regenerative future.”

Mary Ann Piette is the Interim Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She manages a research enterprise comprised of 700 staff and affiliates, including 120 principal investigators working across a broad set of technology R&D programs to accelerate decarbonization ranging from demand-side energy efficiency and grid integration to hydrogen technologies, energy storage, and renewable energy systems. We had a terrific time talking to Mary Ann about her mechanical engineering background and how she thinks about buildings, energy, comfort, and grids. She’s focused on four pillars of decarbonization: energy efficiency, electrification, grid integration, and distributed energy resources.She wrote a chapter for a new book, Women in Renewable Energy (by Katherine T. Wang and Jill S. Tietjen (Springer, 2023) about using building loads dynamically for low-carbon energy systems. “When we change our electricity system to be based on wind and solar, we need to integrate with demand side systems,” she says. “Grid-scale storage is important, but flexible demand can be much more cost effective.” And she points out that this is part of a significant gap in current built environment conditions. “If we are are going to accelerate progress, we need to understand and utilize the feedback between design and operations.” 

Sarah Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator, and writer currently based in Singapore. She leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy. Her latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes a bold set of regenerative design principles for addressing environmental and social challenges. We talked to her about the book and related podcast, her wide-ranging career, and her abiding interest in cities, which was first piqued in her eighth grade year through the Future City competition. She and Pawlyn started working on the book when they perceived tension between  evolution in the built environment community and growing awareness that such progress was not nearly sufficient for the necessary transformation. They sought to tangibly and meaningfully integrate perspectives from outside the built environment, such as Kate Raworth on (doughnut) economics.  “We wanted to craft clear examples of the mindset shifts -- we identify five as new or rediscovered -- to move away from degenerative thinking,” Sarah says. ”We wanted to be direct about the need for a cultural shift, not just technological- or innovation-based change.” She says the book is the beginning of the conversation, which now includes collecting stories of regenerative practice. “The scale of the challenge can feel overwhelming. We need relationships where we can be ourselves and be honest … and then channel them constructively.”

Renée Cheng is an architect and dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. She pioneered research surrounding the intersection of design and emerging technologies and is a leader in the American Institute of Architects around equity in the profession and practice. She led the research effort for AIA guides for equitable practice. She  sees students as partners, and notes that the practice environment they face is radically different from the one their teachers experienced. “We need to be teaching more about collaborating across disciplines,” she says. “And we need to help our students think about agency and knowing their roles. Many architects don’t feel well trained for the ‘conductor’ roles that we need to address complex issues. For a project today, a design team might need to talk to an oceanographer and a native community that is relocating.”Of her work on the AIA practice guides, Renée says that she now understands why some things are slow to change and that she has more respect for the role of culture and the importance of alignment and trust. And of evolving practice within conventional economics, she says: “We are a values-based movement and we are also a capitalism-based industry. But there are different ways to think about ROI -- in terms of prosperity or wellness or life expectancy or collective benefit.” 

Fiona Cousins, a mechanical engineer by training, is the Americas Chair for Arup, guiding a 1,900-person engineering, design, consulting, and planning firm with a focus on collaborating and innovating to shape a better world. Fiona and her teams take a broad view as they pursue value for clients, considering climate change, social equity, and biodiversity. As a longtime leader in the field, Fiona has a keen perspective on the arc of progress. She says that the market transformation that has occurred in the past 30 years means that it feels a bit less like a movement now. “The floor has been raised, through codes and other policy and market work,” she says. “Buildings have to work harder now. But at the leading edge, it still feels like a movement. And now we are asking harder questions, such as: What does it mean for a building to have a biodiversity net gain?” As for what’s next, Fiona is inspired by growing dialogue around water, both as a human rights issue and a technical issue. “I think this topic is far more visceral to people than questions of energy or carbon ever can be,” she says. “And I think it could be the topic that really connects us to the subject of planetary boundaries in a meaningful, actionable way.” 

Marnese Jackson is an environmental and climate justice activist, advocate, trainer, and educator in Pontiac, Michigan. This mother of two is the co-director of the Midwest Building Decarbonization Coalition, which focuses on inspiring and educating Midwesterners to end new installations of fossil fuel equipment in residential and commercial buildings by 2030, and to achieve zero emissions from these buildings by 2050, with integration of equity and labor justice. Marnese started her her career doing energy audits in homes, learned about poor air quality in certain areas, and became a regional organizer with the NAACP’s environmental justice program. She worked with Mothers Out Front, a moms' group focused on working toward a livable climate, and then transitioned back to the buildings realm at the Coalition. “I am part of a movement,” she says, “but I am also just an ordinary person. I can relate to anyone," which she says is important in her role."I am a connector,” she adds. “Being a missionary is not the thing. We are trying to empower self confidence.” Marnese is especially proud of the Coalition’s Equity Summits; last year’s was focused on Self Determination. 

Stephanie Greene has just stepped down from a role as managing director at RMI, where she led the Buildings Program. She also helped launch RMI's building electrification initiative, which is focused on enabling a cost-effective, sustainable, and equitable path to building decarbonization, with work spanning the U.S., China, and India. We talked to her about this work, her previous work at PG&E, building teams, and about how crucial systems thinking is to working on climate issues and the built environment. “I feel like buildings are the center of all the other topics I have worked on,” she says. “It’s exciting to work on buildings because they interact with everything -- utilities, energy, site, transit. And there is a whole human health component, too.” Stephanie says she feels like she is part of a building decarbonization movement “Like many of us, I think, I alternate between frustration and despair and hope and optimism. But that is to be expected -- this is a tough industry. The movement context means that what any one person or team does can have a ripple effect -- and we are seeing more and more of that.” 

Davida Herzl is co-founder and CEO of Aclima, where she leads a team pioneering a new way to diagnose the health of our air and track pollution. A Public Benefit Corporation, Aclima measures air pollution and greenhouse gasses with block-by-block resolution. The company's enterprise software, Aclima Pro, translates billions of scientific measurements into analytics for companies, governments, and communities to reduce emissions and improve public health. Aclima has been driven by two questions: Where is pollution coming from and who is it impacting? Today the company operates the largest mobile sensor network on Earth, creating datasets of hyperlocal greenhouse gas levels and air pollution never before available. David is proud of the work that the Aclima team is doing. “Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time,” she says. “And there are so many intersecting problems -- environmental justice, infrastructure, and more. Our data is a critical part of the solution because transparency ensures accountability and also enables actors across society to take informed climate action.”