From Extraction to Assembly: Researchers Study How Materials Make our Climate Futures
In May 2023, the UVA School of Architecture announced the winners of an inaugural design research challenge — Climate Futures — established to support transdisciplinary teams in the development of a short-term research project focused on climate justice.
Submitted proposals were evaluated by a panel comprised of School of Architecture faculty, students, alumni and community partners and selected based on their quality, clarity and focus on climate justice, capacity for positive short and longer-term impact, and potential for achieving additional funding to support the continuation of the project. Three projects were selected to receive $25K each, over a project period of approximately 18 months.
The material world is a significant contributor to climate change, with the production and use of materials, notably for the construction and building industry, accounting for a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the clean energy revolution relies on the extraction of critical raw materials to support everything from wind farms to solar panels and battery manufacturing — a process that is often done in unsustainable and unjust ways.
From extraction to assembly, the three awarded Climate Futures projects developed research focused on questions of materiality — and how material composition, sourcing, selection, fabrication, assembly, and maintenance impact human, environmental and ecological health. As the project period comes to a close, the research teams share with us the foundational questions, research methods, discoveries and outcomes, and potential next steps that guided their work and addressed the many ways that materials make, and will make, our futures.
On Materials and the Mind:
Biomaterials in Architecture as a Mechanism of Neuroregulation, Human Behavior, and Brain Health
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Background
This collaboration brings together architectural design and materials research with the disciplines of architectural psychology and neuroscience to explore the relationships between biomaterials in architecture, brain functioning, and human behavior. The research posits that the multi-sensorial experience offered by interacting with biomaterials (wood, bamboo, plant fibers, etc.) in architectural applications will increase human connection to nature, in turn supporting mental health and pro-environmental behaviors which play a huge role in supporting planetary health and climate security.
The team's multisensorial approach focused specifically on the dimensions of materiality and tactility manifest in biomaterial constructions whilst applying new theory and methods in architectural neuroscience, a new and emerging discipline exploring how the brain responds to the built environment. In thinking about how to address climate challenges, many people overlook the relevance of psychology. New renewable bio-materials can promote connections between humans and the natural world in ways which are not currently understood. On Materials and the Mind research examines the interrelationships between humans and nature by measuring the impact of unique natural material structures on neurological, cognitive, and emotional health.
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Methodology and Project Development
The interdisciplinary project team embarked on a collaborative process to simultaneously design both the experiment, including data collection goals and methods, and the physical spaces that serve as testing chambers for the research. The goal of this particular research endeavor is to construct an understanding on the relationships between material environments and human experience and neurological activity. This required careful consideration of experiential factors in the space, and decisions were made to isolate variables in participant experience. A study protocol was developed and received IRB approval, while two testing chambers were designed and constructed: identical in form but differing in material.
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Shaped by the requirements of the experimental design, the spatial design took form as Sheets & Slabs, a set of twin vessels. The control, Sheets, is clad in drywall, while its doppelganger, Slabs, scribes live edge wood slabs into a meandering field of grains and curves. The construction of Slabs makes use of loblolly pine felled during construction of the Emmet-Ivy corridor and procured by UVA Sawmilling. The testing chambers were installed in Gilmer Hall for initial data collection, and were designed and fabricated to be disassembled for relocation and repurposing as study rooms, meeting pods, or video-conferencing spaces.
During April and May 2024 , a group of over thirty students from the Department of Psychology and the School of Architecture participated in the study. Participants were exposed to mild stressors before spending time alone in each of the two testing chambers, with a break in between. Half of the participants experienced the normative drywall chamber first, and half experienced the biomaterial wood chamber first.
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Participants completed surveys that provided subjective data about their experiences in each of the spaces. They also wore mobile headsets for continuous EEG monitoring of brain activity. The project team has been encouraged by initial data analysis of the subjective survey data. The EEG data requires additional analysis, and the team is using this information and feedback from participants to help shape the direction of next steps in the research trajectory.
The team hopes that this work will be one of the first qualitative looks at the relationship between architectural materials and brain health and wellbeing. Leaders in the timber building industry and others are eagerly anticipating the publishing of these initial results. The project team aims to publish these results in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and to use the initial findings to inform future testing and grant applications.
Project Team
Katie MacDonald (PI, Architecture), Kyle Schumann (Co-PI, Architecture), Jenny Roe (Co-PI, Urban and Environmental Planning), Kevin Pelphrey (Co-PI, Neurology), Julianna Mollica (PhD in the Constructed Environment), Tanya Evans (Education and Human Development), Stefen Beeler-Dudden (Neurology), Analia Marzoratti (PhD in Applied Developmental Science)
Student Research Assistants: Paul Bourdin (MArch '25), Shiza Chaudhary (MArch '25), Tina Dickey (MArch '25), Avery Edson (MArch '25), Leila Ehtesham (MLA '24), Ammon Embleton (MArch '24), Isaac Goodin (MArch '24), Brandon Meinders (MArch '25), Margaret Saunders (MArch '25)
External Collaborators: Panayotis Mavros (Télécom Paris), Taleen Joseffsson (TAJ Architecture Studio PLLC), Tyrone Yang (Entegra + Architectural Health)
Acknowledgments: UVA FabLab, UVA Sawmilling
Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene:
Towards climate justice for communities, places, and materials of the green energy transition
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Background
The Periodic Table has been called “nature’s Rosetta Stone,” “the chemist’s map” and “probably the most compact and meaningful compilation of knowledge yet devised.” If the time-honored periodic table hanging in science classrooms around the world enables prediction of properties and relationships between material elements, how might a new aperiodic table, updated and borne from the history-defying conditions of the Anthropocene, assist a global community struggling to navigate the material, ecological, and social justice issues of an accelerating climate crisis?
The research team has envisioned The Aperiodic Table as a conceptual framework to represent and re-narrate materials through the beings, places, and ecologies they engage. As the periodic table is organized by rows (periods) and columns (groups) to catalog elements and their properties, the aperiodic table is organized by dynamic interactions of material, body, community, and place, including material design, ethics, and health.
To understand and address pressing material related issues of our times, the team identified three things necessary to develop their work: (1) Real World Chemistry: the study of material pathways and their intersections with bodies, communities, and environments; (2) A Transdisciplinary Approach: Collaboration with people from different disciplines and community contexts, to build new conceptual bridges and working relationships; and (3) Creative Communication: a multifaceted approach to research documentation, production, and expression.
Methodology and Project Development
As part of this project, the team helped to shape the new TranSci Lab for Real World Chemistry and Communication at UVA, a transdisciplinary space for collaborative material design, ethics, and health research. The lab's methodologies draw on diverse disciplinary and human perspectives and adopt multisensorial approaches to engage material pathways– from extraction to production, consumption, and waste. A goal is to more effectively understand the local and global impacts, multifaceted problems embedded within existing systems, and their consequences for human ecologies. This includes resource inequities and the strategies by which human communities cope with shifting conditions and continual threats to health and well-being. A holistic approach to these issues provides important insight into what to adopt and what to avoid in the green energy transition, e.g., circular vs linear economies, production of non-toxic alternatives, low/zero waste protocols, and community inclusion.
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The Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene research project provided a framework for this transdisciplinary way of working. Through this design research project, the team collected, classified, described, and archived material knowledge, while also discovering new connections between places, materials, descriptions, people, and perspectives.
In Summer 2023, the team tested their methodology, traveling to Uganda to investigate the material trajectories of copper and cobalt from mineral extraction to waste. The findings were articulated through the Aperiodic Table framework in physical exhibition format and is currently being developed into web format, with a forthcoming public launch. While in Uganda, the team was able to engage in field work that explored the evidential role that matter has in registering external events, exposing processes and practices.
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More recently, the team held its first workshop at Monticello High School, focused on the use of a designed artifact developed through the lab, Lithium Laterals: A Mineral Tarot. Through the form of a deck of cards, Lithium Laterals is a tool for constructing counternarratives to challenge dominant trajectories of the green energy transition. The deck's structure and interdisciplinary approach encourage diverse interpretations, aiming to stimulate alternative worldviews and pathways to more equitable futures. A form of creative communication, the cards served, in the high school workshop setting, as an educational device to raise awareness of the material complexities that make up the green energy transition. Designing experiences and communicating outcomes of interest and value to wider audiences can raise awareness, inspire change, and foster iterative testing of interventions. This approach, which is central to the TranSci lab, integrates research, teaching, creative and social practice.
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Seeded in part through the Climate Futures award, the TranSci lab activities will continue to expand in future years. The lab partners with students, postdocs, faculty and community members in synergistic departments, schools, programs, and courses. Public-facing events draw students, faculty, and community members together in specially designed multimedia + wet lab physical spaces adjacent to the STEM Commons and aim to catalyze new collaborations. Next year, the team will design digital and physical frameworks for materials/media, and as a prototype, will populate them with findings from their transdisciplinary critical mineral research.
Project Team
Matthew Seibert (PI, Landscape Architecture), Cassandra Fraser (PI, Chemistry)
Student Research Assistants: Julia MacNelly (MLA Candidate), Agnes To (MLA Candidate), Jetta Lin (MArch '24, School of Art Institute of Chicago), Zahid Ahmed Shariff (MArch '24, School of Art Institute of Chicago)
External Collaborators: Berenika Boberska (Feral Studio, Mitchell Visiting Professor, School of Art Institute of Chicago), Theodore Teichman (MLA '23, 22-23 TranSci Lab Graduate Resident), Ash Duhrkoop (PhD Candidate, 22-23 TranSci Lab Graduate Resident), Hugo Kamya (Simmons University), Ishani Saraf (Postdoctoral Research Associate), Devin Zuckerman (PhD Candidate in Religious Studies)
Additional Support: UVA Environmental Institute (Spark Grant), UVA College of Arts and Sciences (Page Barbour Workshop Grant)
Design Mill Build Reflect:
Generating immediate community engagement and positive environmental impacts through urban wood design and build
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Background
The Design Mill Build Reflect research team developed a two-semester course seeking student perspectives from schools of Architecture, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Education, and others to form an interdisciplinary team and a holistic approach to sustainability, fabrication, design, urban forestry, and community outreach. The course focused on hands-on experience, data analytics, empirical analysis and material research design with built-in reflective practices. It built upon the work previously completed by UVA Sawmilling — the solar kiln they have run since Spring 2020 and one recently built at the Community Lab School with high school students.
This passive structure is a necessary component of the material pathway of lumber production at the University of Virginia. While the kiln's function is paramount, its design and fabrication were open to a number of potential modifications, from structural to aesthetic. The team worked with local professionals, arborists and sawyers, to ensure a new stable design, with the goal of dissemination across the county to other universities interested in developing similar sustainability programs and further evaluating the design, while building a network of use cases.
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This research project incorporates a long-term visioning of climate, as tree canopy shifts through die-off and species migrations, as well as climate justice, by analysis of who has access to healthy urban canopy and what that implies about their spaces and their opportunities to develop meaningful circular material flows.
Methodology and Project Development
During the first semester of the course, students were empowered to build the solar kiln through a number of fabrication workshops to provide foundational technical skills to carry out the construction. A small-scale project introduced students to safe practices in the woodshop, proper handling of woodworking tools, and traditional techniques of successful wood construction. Students worked with sawyers to mill and process the material necessary to build this solar kiln, curating cut lists, drying schedules and build timelines in order to prepare for construction of the kiln in the following semester.
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Congruently, students discussed a systematic approach to collecting data on the performance of the solar kiln. Sensors were installed on the existing solar kiln through which data could be collected on relevant aspects like humidity, solar insolation, temperature, and material moisture content. The spring semester was focused on completing the framing of the design rendered over the past semester. A team of 8 students, 3 SRAs, and a few volunteers came together to work on producing the frame, with a focus on understanding wood anatomy to encourage efficient joinery. Course students built a newfound respect for wood as a material, carpentry and framing as a form of craftsmanship, and the give-and-take of team efforts.
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Currently in the permitting process with the expectation to raise the structure this fall, the improved solar kiln design includes a solar panel bracket, cart track, and lift system. As part of the research team's longer-term goals, in-situ analysis will allow for further development of data collection models, sharing of kiln plans, and integration of sensor hardware to enable other universities and local education institutions to build a network of solar kilns to contribute to sustainable material production and pathways in the urban timber industry.
Methodology and Project Development
Andrew Spears (PI, UVA FabLab / UVA Sawmilling), Tim Victorio (PI, UVA Sawmilling), Eric Bredder (PI, Education)
Student Research Assistants: Graham Gewirz (MArch '24), Philip DiMeglio (BSArch '24), Mary Cotterman (MLA '25), Lily Bukalski (BFA '25), Ethan Edds (BSArch ' 25), Pryce Foyt (BSArch '26)
External Collaborators: Wade Cotten (Timber Made Company), Joe Lehnen (Virginia Department of Forestry), Paul Chirico (Fluvanna County High School), Allyson Gibson (Arborist)
Additional Support: UVA FabLab
Acknowledgments
The inaugural Climate Futures Design Research Challenge awards were made possible by the The Urgent Action Fund and The Endowment for our Public Mission—both established by the Class of 1972 in honor of their 50th Reunion. It is co-supported by the School of Architecture's Office of the Dean.
