The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced the winners of this year’s Upjohn Research Initiative, providing up to $30,000 to four research projects advancing sustainable architecture and design. The four projects demonstrate a variety of approaches to tackling climate change, from carbon-reducing materials and a framework guide for flood mitigation, to adaptive building envelope design and a free embodied carbon calculator.

The Upjohn Research Initiative is awarded by the AIA every year, aiming to provide base funds for research projects that advance the profession’s knowledge and practice. This year’s projects focus on climate mitigation and adaption strategies, with previous years including envelope retrofit guides, 3D-printed formworks, and biophilic learning spaces.

This year’s winners continue the theme of sustainable design. The first project, Adaptive Envelopes for a Changing Climate: Exploring Bistability for Building Envelope Design, seeks to generate design guidelines for adaptive building envelopes using bistable laminates. The research will include the development of a prototype bistable adaptive envelope, demonstrating how future facades may be able to change state in response to varying environmental conditions. The research is led by José Pinto Duarte, PhD (Penn State), Elena Vazquez (Penn State), and Zoubeida Ounaies, PhD (Penn State), with collaboration from Neil Katz, AIA (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill).

The second project, Build Carbon Neutral v2.0: A Free Online Embodied Carbon Calculator for Approximate Building and Landscape Impacts, seeks to improve our ability to calculate embodied carbon in buildings, and understand the elements that most heavily contribute to the issue. The team believe that their tool will allow for early, easy assessments of the impact of embodied carbon, and thus educate clients further on potential mitigations. As well as calculating estimates for embodied carbon in the full building, the team will also expand the site and landscape components of the tool, encompassing above-ground biomass and site materials. The research is led by Sean Cryan (Mithun), Claire McConnell (Mithun), and Chuck McDowell (Mithun), with collaboration from Katie Stege, Assoc. AIA (Mithun).

The third project, Mix Design Standard and Strength Gain Correlations Testing for Stabilized Compressed Earth Block (SCEB) Units, seeks to further enable the adoption of earthen materials in construction. Responding to a lack of quality assurance standards and commercially available mixes for earthen construction, the team will outline the material proportions and mixing process for reliably producing SCEB units. Topics of focus will include a streamlined process, a reduction in embodied carbon, and data-driven storytelling on how the materials could contribute to climate solutions. The research is led by Lauran Drown, AIA (Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates), and Michael Donoghue, PE (Maritech Engineering), with collaboration from Celia Mendoza (Earthen Construction Initiative), Ron Evans (De la Tierra Construction), and Ryan Runge (Advanced Earthen Construction Technologies).

The fourth project, unPLANningMIAMI: A Transformative Design Framework for Strategic Decline and Resettlement of South Florida from the Effects of Sea-level Rise and Climate Change, addresses the growing inability of cities to defend against rising sea levels. The research will result in a design and construction manual illustrating how to incorporate measures addressing storm surge, sea-level rise, and changing rainfall/runoff patterns along the heavily-populated South Florida coast, and cities around the world. The research is led by Jeffrey E. Huber, FAIA (Brooks + Scarpa Architects; Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture).