Policy research, technical studies, and housing research.
Applied and academic research on the buildings we already have, organized by focus area. Much of this work is ongoing, and articles and papers are published here as they develop.
The buildings we will occupy in 2050 are, overwhelmingly, already standing. This research looks at how deep retrofit of envelope, systems, and embodied carbon can extend the life and performance of aging housing while staying financially and technically feasible.
Retrofitting: NYC Rowhouses
A thesis building a toolkit for high-performance retrofits of New York's row house stock, translating building-performance data into typology-based frameworks.
Thesis
Existing building retrofit & feasibility
Retrofit strategy, feasibility, and documentation for existing New York residential buildings, from existing conditions to regulatory constraints.
Material circularity & embodied carbon
Quantifying material-recovery potential so that retrofit interventions stay low-carbon across their lifecycle.
How zoning, incentives, and local law shape what actually gets built and kept. Research that connects real-estate economics and regulation to the housing that already exists.
ADUs are one of the least disruptive ways to add housing to existing neighborhoods. This work examines the zoning, code, and feasibility questions that decide whether an ADU is possible on a given lot.
Regulation is increasingly the driver of retrofit. This research tracks the progression of New York City's Local Laws, with emphasis on LL97 and LL154, and turns evolving requirements into practical compliance and retrofit strategy.
Evidence over intuition. Energy modeling, embodied-carbon accounting, and envelope analysis that quantify how a building performs, and how much better it could, before decisions are locked in.
