Technology and Material Innovations
Research + Design

The Berkeley facility is now one of the most advanced test chambers of its type and new studies are already underway.

This new grant program supports cross-disciplinary projects led by CED faculty that aim to reduce the impacts of climate change. This year’s funded projects forge innovations in climate resilience through explorations in building technologies and materials, housing security, water access, and community-based climate visualizations. These projects stood out from the field of applications for their impact on underserved communities and their capacity to have actionable environmental outcomes.

On September 25, Terner Labs hosts the inaugural symposium, The Search for Affordable Rental Housing, a deep dive into how technology is helping and hurting individuals who are seeking affordable rental housing.

The prize–winning architect and founding principal of Office e.g. is focused on developing new environmentalisms in architecture.

CED professor Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, of Emerging Objects, receive the 2023 Jeff Harnar Social & Environmental Justice award for their project Casa Covid, which combines 3D printing with Indigenous building methods and materials.

Architecture faculty members Mark Anderson (Anderson Anderson Architecture) and Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forrest (Ultramoderne) weigh in on how mass timber has the potential to radically change the role of the architect.

CED is proud to announce that the inaugural NASA Equity and Environmental Justice Grant has been awarded to Professor of Landscape Architecture Iryna Dronova, DCRP Professor Emerita Karen Chapple, and DCRP Assistant Professor Zoé Hamstead for their proposal, “Where the Grass Grows Greener: The Impacts of Urban Greening on Housing Prices and Neighborhood Stability.”

The grant awards include monetary and in-kind support for projects that engage emerging technologies. Rael and co-recipient, Virginia San Fratello, plan to use the grant to reexamine Indigenous mud-based building materials through 21st-century robotics.

Yifeng Wang (MArch ’21) and his team won the “Best in Tools” prize at the MIT Reality Hack. The team developed “TalkAI,” which assists speakers to understand and predict the effectiveness of their speech through AI-driven techniques and AR-enabled tools.

Three years after receiving his PhD in City & Regional Planning, Fletcher Foti co-established Populus, a platform that is now utilizing data from shared services like car sharing to help urban planners manage and plan for the future of transportation.

Thirteen students from Ronald Rael’s architectural design studio transformed a site in Vipingo, Kenya, into a living laboratory for innovation as part of their research into the design of 3D-printed houses.

Remote sensing technology is increasingly penetrating our lives — from satellite images underlying everyday routes on Google Maps and smartphones to the ever more familiar buzzing of camera-equipped “toy drones” flying above neighborhoods.

Center for the Build Environment Announces funding to develop ways to integrate commercially available “smart” ceiling fans and communicating thermostats, and to evaluate how they may improve energy efficiency.

Ron Rael, Associate Professor of Architecture, is one of a small group of researchers advancing a novel type of 3D printing capable of processing recycled as well as under-utilized materials into a range of sturdy products.

Groundbreaking research demonstrates the potential of architectural 3-D printing.

Emerging Objects, founded by Associate Professor of Architecture Ron Rael, and Virginia San Fratello has come up with a solution which may be able to greatly reduce the use of air conditioning systems in hot dry climates.

Emerging Objects is the project of two architects, CED Assistant Professor of Architecture Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. A fabrication studio, it focuses on the materials that go into 3D printing.