Healthy Buildings

The way we design and operate buildings plays a central role in our health, due to both the time we spend indoors and the climate impact of the energy used to power our buildings. This course, cross-listed between Harvard Graduate School of Design and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, seeks to leverage the science and approaches from each discipline to find building-related solutions to the public health challenges of our time. Students will explore building strategies that can improve indoor air quality, help prevent the spread of airborne infectious disease, reduce exposure to toxic materials, improve thermal resilience, and support overall well-being, while also examining the role buildings play in our energy system, the cascading health impacts of associated air pollution and climate change, and building design and technologies that can support climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and climate resilience. Through a mix of lectures, case studies, hands-on workshops, real-world building assessments, and a final project pairing students from each school, students will engage deeply in a solutions-focused course at the intersection of public health, environmental health, architecture, and design.