New Carbon Architecture Authors

Wes Sullens

Wes Sullens is an advocate for circular material economies and a regenerative built environment. He has worked in the public, private and nonprofit sectors on broad topics including waste management, recycling, supply chain sustainability, and chemicals transparency. He specializes in green building rating system development, product labeling standards setting, and progressive green building codes advocacy. Wes is a LEED Fellow and currently works for the U.S. Green Building Council as their Director for Building Codes Technical Development.

Craig White

Craig White is a developer, architect and entrepreneur. Founding Director of White Design with over 25 years' experience in architectural practice in the UK and Europe, Craig is also the Director of ModCell Straw Technology and Coobio Circular Materials. Craig is currently leading work on a new model of community led and financed housing that meets the housing crisis challenge using carbon-banking renewable materials. Craig is also a consultant with the Carbon Trust, and senior lecturer at the School of
Architecture and Planning, at the University of West England. A core focus of Craig’s work is how research-led innovation delivers commercial impact and sustainable outcomes.

Massey Burke

Massey Burke is a natural materials specialist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work centers on research, design, and hands-on implementation of building with low-carbon, natural materials, with an interest in applying natural building to existing buildings and the urban fabric. She also teams up with organizations such as the California Straw Building Association and the Ecological Building Network to generate technical information on carbon and natural materials in the built environment, and works on code issues surrounding natural materials through the Cob Research Institute and other collaborators. More on her work can be found here.

Andrew Lawrence

Andrew Lawrence is the leading Timber specialist at Arup, a member of the European Timber Design Code Committee and a judge for the UK Wood Awards. Andrew lectures worldwide on the structural use of timber and is currently working with timber industry bodies in the USA, UK, China, SE Asia and Australia, to help make timber a mainstream construction material. His projects include the highly acclaimed the Metz Pompidou, the Canary Wharf Crossrail Station roof and most recently The Smile, the world's first hardwood CLT structure.

Erin McDade

Erin McDade is a Program Manager for Architecture 2030. She holds a Master of Architecture degree and previously worked at the Integrated Design Lab. While with the IDL she helped develop Targeting 100!, a tool enabling deep energy retrofits and high-performance new construction in the healthcare sector. She also completed lighting and thermal analyses of the revolutionary Bullitt Center. She leads Architecture 2030’s Products Challenge, is founding chair of the Embodied Carbon Network, and is on the board of the Carbon Leadership Forum. She is also leading AIA+2030 Online Series development, helping design professionals create zero carbon buildings.

Catherine De Wolf

Currently a PhD Candidate in Building Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Prof. John Ochsendorf, Catherine De Wolf is working as a Research Assistant in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge with Dr. Alice Moncaster and Prof. Peter Guthrie.

After studying Civil Engineering and Architecture at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, she obtained a Masters of Science in Building Technology at MIT in the United States. This was followed by a PhD in Building Technology, within the department of Architecture (ongoing).

Professional experiences include working for Arup, Ney & Partners and other leading architectural and structural design firms.

Katrina Simonen

Kathrina Simonen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington with over 15 years of professional practice experience as an architect and structural engineer. Her research is focused on understanding and reducing the environmental impacts of manufacturing building materials and products through the use of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). She is founding director of the Carbon Leadership Forum, an industry-academic collaborative focused on linking LCA to design and construction practice and authored a handbook, Life Cycle Assessment, a primer for building industry professionals looking to learn about LCA.

Barbara X. Rodriguez

Has devoted over a decade to the creation and improvement of analytic tools to assess carbon in the buildings. She was the first LEED AP woman in Chile and later the Chief Sustainability Officer at the Center for Innovation and Research of Buildings at Universidad de Chile, where she led the first EPD program for the building sector in Latin America. She was director of ECOBASE, the first nationwide LCI for building materials in Chile. In 2015 she received the National Award for Sustainable Construction Leaders under 35 from the Chilean Chamber of Construction. She is currently pursuing a PhD at University of Washington.

Larry Strain

Siegel & Strain Architects - Larry has 40+ year background in sustainable design and studied ecological systems at Evergreen State College and the Farallones Institute. He wrote a Guideline Specification for Green Materials, which became part of Building Green’s GreenSpec Directory. He has spoken on materials and sustainability at conferences throughout the country, is a past board member of the Northern Cali¬fornia Chapter of the USGBC, and currently serves on the boards of the Ecological Building Network and the Carbon Leadership Forum. For the past seven years Larry has focused on reducing the total carbon footprint of our buildings.

Frances Yang, SE, LEED AP BD+C

Frances is a structures and materials sustainability specialist in the Energy + Sustainability group of the San Francisco office of Arup. Frances uses her studies in structural engineering, life cycle assessment, architecture for the environment, and green chemistry in leading the Sustainable Materials Consulting practice for the Arup Americas region. She recently served as vice-chair of the Materials and Resources TAG of USGBC and chair of the ASCE/SEI Life Cycle Assessment working group. She also contributes to the Carbon Leadership Forum and AIA Materials Knowledge Working Group. More info on Arup Materials Consulting at http://www.arup.com/services/materials

Jason Grant

For 25 years, Jason Grant has been a leader in the sustainable forestry and green building movements. Jason co-founded EcoTimber, one of the first companies in the world to bring certified ecological forest products to market. A LEED AP BD&C, Jason is recognized as an expert in ecological forest products and their role in green building. He has long advocated for sustainable forestry and responsible wood use as a member Sierra Club’s Forest Certification & Green Building Team. And he is the author of (R)evolution in the Redwoods, an educational program on the transition of California’s redwood industry from exploitation toward restoration and stewardship (www.redwoodevolution.com).

Bruce King

Bruce King is the founder of the Ecological Building Network (EBNet), and a registered engineer with 35 years of worldwide experience in structural engineering and construction. He is the author of Buildings of Earth and Straw, Making Better Concrete, Design of Straw Bale Buildings, ASTM International E-2392, earthen building guidelines, and dozens of papers and articles for conferences and journals. He has organized three international conferences on ecological building, and is the founder of BuildWell Source, a user-based collection of low-carbon materials knowledge, and of the BuildWell Symposia. www.bruce-king.com www.ecobuildnetwork.org

Chris Magwood

Chris Magwood is obsessed with making the best, most energy efficient, carbon sequestering, beautiful and inspiring buildings without wrecking the whole darn planet in the attempt.
Chris is currently the executive director of The Endeavour Centre, a not-for-profit sustainable building school in Peterborough, Ontario. He has authored numerous books on sustainable building, including Essential Hempcrete Construction (2016), Making Better Buildings (2014) and More Straw Bale Building (2005). In 1998 he co-founded Camel’s Back Construction, and over eight years helped to design and/or build more than 30 homes and commercial buildings, mostly with straw bales and often with renewable energy systems.

Fernando Martirena

Professor Fernando Martirena is the director of CIDEM (Center for Research & Development of Structures and Materials) at the Universidad Central de las Villas in Santa Clara, Cuba, which is a world-leading institution in the development and implementation of appropriate technologies for social housing.
Professor Fernando Martirena spearheaded the emergence of appropriate technologies in Cuba and Latin America at the beginning of the 1990’s, with a strong focus on making cement more sustainable through the use of pozzolans. Through the years this movement has evolved to a network, the recipient of many awards: the Latin American Network for the Sustainable Habitat, ecosur (www.ecosur.org), that encourages south to south technology transfer.

Paul Jaquin

Dr. Paul Jaquin is a chartered structural and geotechnical engineer working in New Zealand. Paul completed his PhD thesis in 2008 at the University of Durham, UK entitled “Analysis of Historic Rammed Earth Construction”. Working as a consulting engineer, he has undertaken the design of a number of earth buildings. Paul is a highly cited author of academic papers and books regarding earth building, and has spoken at conferences around the world. www.historicrammedearth.co.uk

Mikhail Davis

Mikhail Davis is Director of Restorative Enterprise at Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet. He is responsible for advancing Interface’s globally recognized Mission Zero commitment in the Americas by building internal leadership capacity and creating external partnerships. He also chairs the LEED Materials & Resources Technical Advisory Group for the US Green Building Council.

Previously, he served as manager to environmental icon David Brower and spent five years with Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting building sustainable business strategies for Fortune 500 companies. He holds a B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University and is a certified Biomimicry Specialist.

Wil V. Srubar III

Wil V. Srubar III, PhD, LEED AP is an assistant professor of architectural engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). A structural engineer by training, he received his PhD degree in 2013 in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University with a specific focus on biopolymers and bioplastics for construction. At CU, he is actively engaged in research projects related to durable, low-carbon polymer- and cement-based construction materials. He is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Architectural Engineering Institute, and he currently serves as a co-chair of the Embodied Carbon Network. Website: http://spot.colorado.edu/~wisr7047/

Pete Walker

Pete Walker is Professor of Innovative Construction Materials and Director of the BRE Centre of Innovative Construction Materials at the University of Bath, UK. A Chartered Civil and Structural Engineer, Pete has been doing research on construction materials and technologies for over 30 years. His particular interests are natural materials, including straw bale, earth building and natural fibre composites. He has published over 180 articles. He teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the joint Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering at the University of Bath. He was the inaugural chair of Earth Building, UK (the national earth association for earth building).

Andrew Thomson

Andrew Thomson works at the University of Bath as a Research Associate. His work focuses on advancing the use of low carbon construction materials within the construction industry. He has contributed to the structural design of some of the UK’s largest Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) buildings and was a key member of the research team that delivered the UK’s first certified straw bale panel product; ModCell Core. Andy has also worked as a rammed earth building Contractor in New Mexico and as an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. http://www.bath.ac.uk/ace/people/thomson/index.html

Daniel Maskell

Daniel Maskell is a Prize Fellow in Innovative Construction Materials in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the Univeristy of Bath (UK). Dan’s interests are in innovative building materials and how these can be used for the improvement of the indoor environment quality for improved occupant health and well being. He has a wide experience with natural building materials including earth, straw bale and other inorganic and organic materials. Dan’s approach is to consider holistically the use of these materials, investigating their material properties for structural and indoor environment regulation.