Modeling resource-efficient districts with UBEM Workshop

The MIT Portugal Program invites you to join Professor Christoph Reinhart of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a three-hour workshop (from 9am-12:30pm) on Wednesday, October 13th at Técnico, Lisbon. 

This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to concepts and workflows to model buildings’ operational energy use and embodied energy, as well as neighborhoods’ walkability and urban food production potential, both for new and existing districts. 

The resulting urban building energy models (UBEM) can be used to develop resource-efficient new developments, to help municipalities develop greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction plans for their jurisdictions, to convince citizens to retrofit their homes, and to coordinate development of the building stock and the electric grid.  

Who Can Apply?

The workshop is structured for a max of 15 students preferably from architecture and engineering fields and 5 practitioners from architecture and urban planning firms. If possible we will pair the students with practitioners to develop a high-level carbon reduction strategy for existing buildings in the Eastern side of Lisbon (Beato, Marvila or Parque das Nações), build an UBEM of a typical neighborhood and quantify retrofitting costs and expected savings for the neighborhood.

Please NOTE: 
– To participate in this workshop you will need a newish Windows PC.
– If you have a Mac you can also participate, as long you have Windows installed on your laptops (on Bootcamp or using a virtual machine).
– This hands-on workshop can only host a limited number of participants. The deadline for application is Friday, October 8, 1:00 pm (Lisbon time). Your registration at the workshop will be confirmed via email. 

More information about the program will be soon posted. For further information please contact info@mitportugal.org 

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About Christoph Reinhart 

Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT he is leading the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. He is also the head of Solemma, a technology company and Harvard University spinoff as well as Strategic Development Advisor for mapdwell, a solar mapping company and MIT spinoff. Products originating from SDL and Solemma are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.

Christoph’s work has been recognized with various awards among them a Fraunhofer Bessel Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2018), the IBPSA-USA Distinguished Achievement Award (2016), a Star of Building in Science award by Buildings4Change magazine (2013) and seven best paper awards.