In this episode of Inclusive Urban Futures, we explore inclusiveness through building technology. We speak about intelligent facades and building energy with Dr Carlos Ochoa, Building Energy Senior Researcher at IERC - International Energy Research Centre in Ireland, whose scientific publications have been cited over 1000 times worldwide.
The focus on building facades may seem to be narrow when regarded from a perspective of urbanization as a whole and quite remote from the notions of inclusion. But in our conversation, Dr Ochoa proves quite the opposite.
Building facades are a vital part of the conversation in the context of building energy regulation, they are the buildings’ outer shell that protects the users from heat and cold, but also regulate the building energy flux as well as the level the CO2 emissions. In this way, facades have a direct link not only to the discussions about climate change and the role of the built environment in it but also about energy poverty and general housing affordability.
Dr Ochoa dedicated his career to studying building outer shells and the development of intelligent facades. He explains that is it important to bring access to advanced and intelligent facade technologies to wider society as one of the ways to contribute to inclusive urban futures. He highlighted that the process of creation of the new facade technologies is as much about engineering as it is about understanding the needs of the building users (owners, tenants etc.) and the community. And so this conversation helped us explore inclusiveness from yet another perspective – technology and access to it.
However, Dr Ochoa also highlighted the current shortcomings of the existing built environment, pointing out that even the new construction suffers from the limited implementation of the available facade technologies that can better regulate building energy and CO2 emissions. Among other important issues, he spoke about the importance of public policies and finance in making these technologies more widely implemented and accessible to wider society.
Dr. Carlos Ochoa is an architect with a specialization in sustainable environmental design analysis. He has a PhD and MSc from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where he researched the efficient use of energy and daylight for human comfort and architectural planning of intelligent facade elements. Further specialization in human-based experimentation was acquired during his postdoc at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Other noteworthy achievements include the development of NewFacades, a computer selection tool for the early architectural design stages. Very few examples of such tools exist.
Currently, he is the project coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project MiniStor (www.ministor.eu) at the International Energy Research Centre, based in Cork, Ireland.
Website: http://www.ierc.ie/
http://www.ierc.ie/core-team/#carlos-ochoa-senior-researcher
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carloseochoam/
Find Dr Ochoa's publications on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0BJBeToAAAAJ&hl=en
Connect with the host and executive producer of the INCLUSIVE URBAN FUTURES, Dr Orna Rosenfeld at: https://www.ornarosenfeld.com/