Mission
Decarbonizing the built environment while improving how buildings perform.
The mission of the Better Buildings and Futures Lab is to develop innovative engineering and design approaches that enable the built environment to become more sustainable, resilient, and responsive to human needs.
We pursue this mission through four interconnected objectives:
1. Decarbonize buildings and construction.
We develop methods to quantify, understand, and reduce the embodied carbon associated with building materials, structural systems, and construction practices.
2. Design for multiple performance metrics.
We investigate how structural, acoustic, environmental, and other building-performance objectives interact—and develop methods to optimize these objectives simultaneously rather than in isolation.
3. Design and engineer buildings for resiliency.
We explore materials, systems, and design strategies that can help buildings and communities respond to changing climate conditions, extreme events, resource constraints, and evolving societal needs.
4. Connect research with practice.
We translate fundamental research into computational tools, design methodologies, datasets, and practical strategies that can be used by architects, engineers, contractors, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Our Approach
The Better Buildings and Futures Lab is intentionally interdisciplinary. We combine:
- Engineering and Building Design Principles
- Optimization Methodologies
- Life Cycle Assessment
- Multi-objective Assessment
- Circular Economy
- Life Cycle Cost Analysis
- Computational Simulations
- Experimental Validation
- Construction Practices
Our goal is not simply to understand how buildings perform.
Our goal is to discover strategies and synergies to maximize building performance.