Grinham Research Group
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
News
Hansjörg Wyss on his pioneering work in conservation
Philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss and the Wyss Foundation are committed to accelerating the pace and scale of conservation, supporting innovative academic research, and finding long-term solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Since its establishment in 1998, the Wyss Foundation has led the movement to conserve at-risk ecosystems for future generations to enjoy. […]
Our Artificial Nature: Exhibition
Our Artificial Nature daylights the cultural, social, and technological processes emerging within design discourse in response to the environmental imperatives of our time. The in-progress research of the Center of Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) core and affiliated research faculty at the GSD provides a window onto the often-invisible mechanics of the built environment that allow us to see, analyze, and design our future world in new and yet-unimagined ways. […]
A Team of Harvard Researchers Develop a Prototype for a More Efficient and Eco-friendly Air Conditioner
Continuing a trend from this summer, September 2023 was the hottest September on record, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. As climate change increases global temperatures, world cooling demands are expected to triple by 2050. While globally accessible and cheap to manufacture, conventional air conditioners still rely on wasteful mechanical vapor-compression methods […]
Sixteen Student Stools: Exhibition
Economic growth, material extraction, and greenhouse gas emissions have a near-99 percent correlation. Building is an act of climate change. This exhibition draws increased attention to climate change pedagogy at the Graduate School of Design by showcasing sixteen student-designed stools from the MArch core course, Materials. […]
New Air-Conditioning Technology Could Be the Future of Cool
This past July was the hottest recorded month in human history. Heat waves smashed temperature records worldwide and even brought summer temperatures to Chile and Argentina during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. It’s more than just a matter of sweaty discomfort. Severe heat is the deadliest of all weather events; in the U.S. alone, it kills more people each year than floods, tornadoes and hurricanes combined. As climate change worsens, […]
New technologies could keep people cool in a warming world
Power outages shut down air conditioning for hundreds of thousands of people in Ohio last summer. Temperatures in Columbus on June 14 hit 34° Celsius (93° Fahrenheit). Overnight, temps didn’t get cooler than 25 °C (77 °F). As a result, homes stayed hot and stuffy. Climate change made that hot night more likely than it would have been otherwise, according to a data tool used by Climate Central. That’s a nonprofit news group that analyzes and reports on climate science. […]
Cooling Off: Low-Carbon Alternative to AC
The career paths of a materials scientist and an architect are unlikely to cross. Yet in Joanna Aizenberg’s Biomineralization and Biomimetics Lab, at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the expertise of both materials science and architecture are combined to produce energy efficiency technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. […]
Energy-Saving, Low-Cost Air Conditioning
Turning on an air-conditioning unit is a catch-22. As climate change increases global temperature, world cooling demands are expected to triple by 2050. This translates to 10 new air-conditioning units deployed every second for the next three decades. But traditional AC systems are far from climate friendly. They shuttle a refrigerant between the liquid and vapor phases to remove heat and moisture from incoming air—a process that requires huge amounts of energy […]
Air conditioning has a climate problem. New technology could help.
Last week, Californians got a reminder of one of the most vexing paradoxes of global warming. With temperatures well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions on Tuesday night, hundreds of thousands of the state’s residents received beeping text alerts to notify them that the power grid, straining under the weight of millions of air-conditioning units, […]
Harvard researchers designed a cheaper, more efficient air conditioner
In China, a searing heat wave has lasted for more than two months, and the power grid is straining as people crank up their air-conditioning. The country is one of the places where AC use has been growing the fastest, with a five-fold jump between 2000 and 2017. But as the planet keeps getting hotter, and more people around the world are able to afford air-conditioning, its use is growing everywhere. […]
10 teams tackle climate change
Harvard faculty and students are advancing solutions to climate change and its wide-ranging impacts through new scientific, technological, legal, behavioral, public health, policy, and artistic innovations. Ten research teams will share $1.3 million in the eighth round of the Climate Change Solutions Fund (CCSF) awards. Aiming for impact at both the local and global level, these projects will seek to reduce the risks of climate change, […]