Buildings Come ALivE at GSD

At the Harvard Graduate School of Design, students populate wide desks in a massive hall made to resemble a staircase-like library. While the outside of this concrete structure appears foreboding and more than a bit brutalist, inside, the possibilities of what buildings can look like, and achieve, are evolving rapidly.

An unlikely connection between biomaterials and architecture started at a minuscule level, as researchers explored ways to make buildings both more environmentally efficient and comfortable to be in.

These first ideas came from a partnership between the GSD, the Wyss Institute, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to explore the next realm of building technologies and adaptive materials. Eventually, the GSD began expanding past collaborations and developing its own independent projects.

Professor of Architectural Technology Martin Bechthold studies unique architectural elements like ceramics and carbon-negative building materials. But the Adaptive Living Environments project was the first time that Bechthold collaborated with bioengineers, a perspective that allowed the team to approach problems backward.

“It was more or less like we were trying to find a problem for solutions,” Bechtold says. “We took those materials systems and tried to, in a way, hack them and try to imagine what they might do in the built environment.”

The first project implemented a dynamic multi-layer data control system into glass windows that would direct light coming from inside or outside of the building. With this system, buildings could adjust where light went inside, and also change how the interior space looks from the outside.

“Adaptivity has been around for a very long time. For buildings, we do it in very simple ways by moving furniture around or changing the blinds on the facade,” Bechthold says.

Projects like the adaptive glass imagine what new adaptive materials might look like when applied to built structures. Looking at most buildings today, however, much of our architecture remains relatively static. Bechthold attributes part of this lag to the culture of risk-aversion in architectural innovation in the U.S., which requires clients and contractors to take their chances on new ideas.

“The building industry is very, very conservative. It’s very fragmented. There are no big players willing to take those risks; clients don’t want to take those risks,” Bechthold says. “Training designers or giving them tools to create, to come up with much more sustainable solutions — that in itself isn’t enough to be a part of a system unless you solve the systemic challenge.”

This is typically where the Wyss Institute steps in, helping researchers partner with scientists and access funding. The Institute’s mission is to translate academic work into commercial settings, launching 55 companies in 14 years.

The GSD is creating prototypes and aiming to license patents for its current projects. Bechthold’s work has since included scientists from The California Institute of Technology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich.

“We find that the methods are very complementary. We have the ability to imagine new futures. Scientists are very good at the factual level, and so we have complementary perspectives,” Bechthold says.

For Wyss, business proposals and grants are still ongoing, as well as different grant and investment amounts ranging from $20,000 to $200,000, which can help scientists and researchers test smaller ideas and conduct more large-scale projects.

From research to grants to investment, both the Wyss Institute and the GSD focus on implementing forward-thinking designs into the market.

“It’s lovely to write academic papers and books and give talks, but at the end of the day, we want to make a difference in the world,” Bechthold says.