Sustainable Buildings

Uli Dangel is a professor, Stott Chair, and the director of the School of Architecture & Environment (SAE) at the University of Oregon. Dangel’s research and teaching focus on the use of wood in construction, its influence on building culture and craft, and how it contributes to the advancement of sustainable practices at the scale of local and global economies. Birkhäuser Basel published his first two books, Sustainable Architecture in Vorarlberg: Energy Concepts and Construction Systems and Turning Point in Timber Construction: A New Economy, in 2010 and 2017 respectively. Dangel’s latest book, Time for Timber, published in 2019 by the Center for American Architecture and Design at UT Austin, documents research he completed as the Center’s 2016-2018 Meadows Fellow.

Professor Ihab Elzeyadi directs the High Performance Environments lab (HiPE) and supervises net-zero design studios, such as the 2020 Solar Decathalon student competition grand-prize winner. He uses a data-driven and human-centric approach to improve energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and occupant multi-comfort, health, and well-being for clients such as the Saint-Gobain Corporation. In his teaching, he employs digital simulation and a full-scale Facade Innovations Technology testing facility (FIT) that he created for Dynamic Facades R&D. His Net-Zero Schools Toolbox™ project highlights how school designs can promote health, energy savings, and better learning.

Dr. Mark Fretz is a Co-Director, Institute for Health in the Built Environment, Assistant Professor of Architecture in the College of Design, and Director of the Institute’s industry research consortium, Build Health. Prior to studying and practicing architecture, Mark was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and has transitioned from investigating oral microbiomes to building microbiomes and architectural design, bringing this transdisciplinary background into architectural design practice, teaching, and research.

Award-winning educator Professor Kwok’s co-authored books provide strategies and resources for professionals and students to use in schematic design. They include The Green Studio Handbook, Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, and Passive House Details. She has trained students to connect design intent and actual outcome by investigating buildings with sensors and post-occupancy surveys. She has mentored many university teachers to develop exercises to implement at their home institutions. In the picture above, blower door testing is performed on a single-family Passive House project to determine the overall airtightness of a house, areas of air leakage, and treatment to those areas.

Baker Lighting Lab Director and Co-Director at the Institute for Health in the Built Environment, Associate Professor Siobhan Rockcastle’s research advances our understanding of human-centric design to promote the healthy occupation of buildings. Her research team studies how the light exposure in buildings can impact physiological systems and drive emotion, comfort, and human behavior. She also explores the use of Virtual Reality to drive design decision-making for daylit and electric lighting environments.  Siobhan is the Director of Design at OCULIGHT dynamics, a company offering specialized daylight design support to promote healthy indoor occupation.  She was awarded a Hans Fischer Fellowship in 2022 and the ARCC New Researcher Award in 2021.

Professor Judith Sheine is the Director of Design for the TallWood Design Institute, a partnership of the University of Oregon’s College of Design and Oregon State University’s Colleges of Forestry and Engineering focused on the advancement of engineered wood products through research, testing, outreach and education. The Institute’s new home is the A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory at OSU which includes equipment for structural testing, advanced timber manufacturing and digital fabrication.

Associate Professor Philip Speranza uses computational methods and fine-grained environmental data as a means of researching the design of buildings and cities.  His professional practice, Speranza Architecture + Urban Design, employs data-driven passive environmental controls and remote sensing in the design of residential and mixed-use projects, which have included the "Push Pull" House (AIA SWO Honor Award 2018), the Hudson House, and the Birch Residence (AIA SWO Citation Award 2018). The studio received an Oregon Energy Trust Net-Zero Award in 2018.

Dylan Wood is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, with a focus on material responsive computational design and advanced manufacturing. His research and teaching centers on developing intelligent approaches for utilizing ecological resources in new forms of architecture and building construction. He is the co-founder of hylo tech, a spin-off company pioneering methods of self-shaping manufacturing across scales. His research and design contributions at the University of Stuttgart lead to full scale building technology demonstrators including the Urbach Tower, Wangen Tower, HygroShell, and the LivMats Biomimetic Shell.