In this episode of Deep Green, host Avinash Rajagopal is joined by Holly Samuelson, Associate Professor and Fairchild Career Development Chair at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. She’s a building scientist, an architect, and an educator whose work focuses on how building design impacts health and carbon emissions.
At MIT, she directs the Livable Spaces Lab, an interdisciplinary research group advancing healthy, energy-efficient buildings for people and the planet. The lab combines computational and experimental methods to tackle urgent challenges, including heat, vulnerability, thermal resilience, indoor air quality, carbon emissions, and the future of building design in a shifting energy landscape.
Read the excerpt below to learn her take on the current state of sustainable design in the U.S., how energy performance and occupant health are increasingly connected, the biggest roadblocks to mainstreaming sustainable strategies, and the tangible steps architects and collaborators can take to create healthier, lower-carbon buildings, or listen to the full episode on the Surround Podcast Network.
Avi Rajagopal (AR): Why don’t you kick us off by giving us an introduction to your work at the Livable Spaces Lab?
Holly Samuelson (HS): The Livable Spaces Lab, or LivLab, is my research group at MIT. It’s a group of students and researchers, and as you mentioned, we investigate how thoughtful building design protects occupant and public health, by reducing energy-related emissions and enhancing indoor environmental quality.
Currently, we’re working on thermal resilience—how buildings can provide safer indoor conditions during power outages or extreme temperatures. For example, this includes low-income or older-adult housing, rapidly heating regions of the globe, and emergency shelters.
We look at indoor air quality, and you mentioned architecture in an evolving energy context. So we’re thinking about how architectural design best practices should or could adjust to the changing context—for example, switching from fossil-fuel heating to heat pumps or adding more renewable energy to the grid. Are there things we need to consider, for example, in window design to adjust to this new context?
AR: That all sounds exciting. One thing that’s really apparent in the work of LivLab and throughout your long career is your focus on everyday concerns. How important is it to you that sustainable design strategies become really mainstream—meaning that we incorporate some minimal level of energy reduction, thermal resilience, comfort, air quality, and public health outcomes in all ordinary buildings—rather than only in high-investment, high-profile projects? And why are you so focused on making these strategies accessible?
HS: Well, we’re not going to solve the problems of the planet just by focusing on the high-profile projects. So, my goal is to have a scalable impact, and hats off to the researchers, policy makers and design teams that are working on everyday buildings to improve them. I hope that I can look back and say that I have been able to scale sustainable design somewhat to the broader reach of the building industry, and I’m fortunate as an academic to be able to define my scope and to focus on issues where we think we might be able to make a difference.
AR: Holly, I think the other aspect of your work is your focus both on occupant health as well as outcomes for say, climate change. And while there’s a lot of people who are interested in both of those things, I don’t know that a lot of people look at them as connected to each other or consequences of each other. Are we getting any better at connecting those two things? And why is it that you deal with them holistically in your work at LivLab?
HS: That’s a great question. I don’t think that we’ve come up with one holistic metric where we can put a number and say, “We’ve combined all of the health metrics and all of the energy metrics, and this is a better approach.” I think that objective would be fraught with challenges. But I do think that the building industry has gotten better at considering both occupant health and energy efficiency, and thus public health.
We’ve certainly had some learning moments in history. If you consider building design after the 1970s oil crisis, in the name of energy efficiency we turned to deep floor plates—buildings with little surface area, sealed dark windows, and dialed-back ventilation rates.
At best, we were delivering unpleasant buildings and, at worst, an era of sick buildings. Next, if you consider the first generation of LEED-certified buildings—LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—ironically, studies showed that many of these early buildings used more energy than their non-green counterparts.
Several of them had all-glass facades, and that was driven, in part, by wellness-focused credits in the LEED rating system that gave credits for daylight and views without much penalty for the energy consequences of over-glazing. So, I think these were two learning moments where maybe we were focused on energy without thinking about occupant health or focusing a little bit more on occupant health without as much focus on energy. And I think we’ve learned from both experiences—LEED has improved, and I think our buildings have improved. I think we have gotten better at considering both energy performance and occupant health.
And I love to point out that the topics of energy and health are more related than they might appear. Studies have linked huge numbers of premature deaths to air pollution, specifically from burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, heating, cooling, powering and constructing buildings are responsible for large portions of fossil fuel combustion, which is driving climate change, another public health crisis. So, I like to tell my students that we need to protect the health of both our building occupants and all the people living literally and figuratively downwind of the fuels burned to operate our buildings.
AR: At METROPOLIS we used to joke that we have an occupant problem. We focus so much on the experience of the people in the building and maybe don’t think about the larger consequence of buildings. It’s hard to hold both of those groups in your mind as you’re working. Both at MIT and then previously in your position at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, in your work as an architect, you’ve seen the arc of the green building movement in the U.S. So, I’m going to ask you a big question: How are we doing? Are we doing better, or have we kind of plateaued? Are there places where we’re falling short?
HS: We are progressing, no doubt. In my career, I went from sneaking extra insulation into wall sections and trying to talk clients into pursuing nascent certifications, to being able to make a full-time living from sustainability consulting—going back to academia to learn more and answer questions driven by industry demands—and then being able to teach others to go out and do this.
So, I feel very fortunate to see that sustainable design has grown and become more important and mainstream. I think we’re progressing. Is it fast enough to abate all the climate problems we’re getting into? Maybe not—but we’re progressing.
AR: You know, our research shows that, broadly speaking, architects and designers in the U.S.: a) want to incorporate sustainable design strategies into their work, b) feel they have the basic knowledge to start or continue doing that work, and c) feel the work is only going to become more important over time—which is really important.
But when we asked them, “Why aren’t you able to do more than you do right now?” we got some pretty expected answers: a lack of external motivators, like policy frameworks or regulations that would support the work they could do, and the hard work of convincing clients—whether tenants, owners, or developers—to invest in this work or do things differently from the defaults they’re used to.
I think that’s interesting. From your point of view, where do you think some of the roadblocks are in terms of getting that acceleration—so that we really are on track to address the problems of climate change or to abate some of the sick building problems we’ve had?
HS: Good question. I do think that the building industry has made great strides and is continuing to progress. I think that the free market can’t do it alone, though. So, I think one of the roadblocks is lack of leadership, pushing for progress, especially at the federal level to call for more progress in sustainable design.
AR: When we say that policy is one of the roadblocks, I think folks in the building industry—especially architects and designers—can feel frustrated because they don’t directly influence policy.
One way I think you’ve found a route to influencing public opinion, and therefore policy, is by taking your scholarly work—say around energy efficiency, solar heat gain, and thermal comfort—and translating it into strategies that a wide audience can apply. You recently worked with The Washington Post on a piece about energy upgrades that people could make to their homes now—affordable ones. Why is that work important to you? Why do you want to translate your scholarly work into that accessible set of tools or strategies for people?
HS: Thank you for asking and for noting that. Most of what we’re doing is writing scholarly articles, hoping to reach other researchers or design teams that are implementing tools and suggesting looking at things a different way. But it is exciting when I have an opportunity like this one, so thank you for having me. Same for The Washington Post where I do get to try to translate some of that research for a broader audience. Because as we know, the building industry is one of the most fragmented industries. There are so many building owners and so many decision makers and trying to get everyone the information needed to make the best decisions for their buildings is difficult. So when I have an opportunity, I really appreciate it.
AR: I think that’s a pretty good analysis of where the problem lies. We have so many stakeholders in buildings—I like to tell people that buildings are maybe the most complex things we make as human beings—and so many people are involved in making them.
Where do you think we need to do more work between architects and other collaborators—like developers, clients, real estate brokers, contractors, or product manufacturers—to move the needle? For example, in your work around energy efficiency or energy upgrades, or in your work around indoor air quality, where are the areas where architects and these other stakeholders could come together more effectively to start making real changes?
HS: Great question. This might sound strange in an era of information overload, but I think we need better access to information. For example, more information from manufacturers about building materials would be very helpful so that architects or owners can make more informed choices. In terms of health impacts and lifecycle analysis, it would be great to know when our materials contain chemicals we don’t need or want—like unnecessary flame retardants, antimicrobials, or other unhelpful substances.
I think in the real estate world, the industry needs to be able to price value appropriately. If you ask someone the difference between a $300 and a $3,000 laptop, they probably understand it. But with a building that will change hands, communicating that value is more difficult.
Who is making sustainable and healthy design choices for the long term? It tends to be entities that will own and operate their buildings for a long time, like universities—they understand that they will be around to see the payback, whether it’s financial, productivity, or health-related. It’s more challenging to make these long-term value decisions for buildings that are developed, sold, or rented quickly.
If we had a perfectly transparent market, someone should be able to pay more for a higher-value building, knowing it will pay back down the road—whether they’re reaping the benefits or it’s the next owner in line.
I feel like if we had a better way to communicate value—whether through energy disclosure or more information about indoor air quality of buildings— that would be helpful in the real estate industry.
Listen to “The Science of Better Buildings” on the Surround Podcast Network.