Research
Our Research
We focus on issues that directly impact people and how we can make a difference. Central to all our efforts is the question: how can we improve people’s lives?
Scale-up Building Retrofits
Over 60 million homes lack resilience, health, and efficiency, leading to social, health, and economic vulnerabilities. Our goal is to empower communities and speed up the transition to sustainable, thriving neighborhoods. By partnering with communities to electrify and retrofit homes at the neighborhood level, we aim to boost participation, cut capital and operating costs, and enhance community resilience and health.
Affordable Housing and Buildings using natural resources
We need more homes—homes that do more than just provide shelter. Using mass timber construction, we strive to build resilient, energy-efficient houses that withstand extreme conditions and reduce energy costs, using wood harvested from forest thinning
Space-constrained housing
Many existing technologies don’t suit dense living environments or lack community input. We seek solutions that make homes healthier, more efficient, and resilient by listening to occupants and workers, while considering manufacturing limitations and multi-family living constraints.
Resilient and flexible housing retrofit solutions
Most technologies are designed for new construction. We explore retrofit solutions that make homes more resilient to extreme events, reduce energy costs, and serve as flexible assets for the electric grid, thereby decreasing vulnerabilities.
These interconnected challenges, when addressed collectively, can yield comprehensive and multifaceted advantages. For instance:
- When we develop affordable housing using mass timber, we enhance home resilience against extreme temperatures, lower energy costs, mitigate our housing shortage, and through sustainable forest management, diminish wildfire smoke impacts.
- By electrifying and retrofitting homes at the community level, we can cut costs and time, more effectively reduce energy expenses, improve air quality, and increase resilience to extreme weather events.
Our Sponsors
