The Impact of School Facilities on Student Learning & Engagement
A team of researchers at the University of Oregon’s NetZED Laboratory are taking a deep dive into how school buildings affect the learning outcomes of students. NetZED’s work reviews the literature on school facilities and details the relationships between students...
New Publication: Novel VOC Breath Tracer Method for Studying Aerosol Transmission
It’s important to stay six feet apart, but eventually it stops mitigating disease transmission risk. Several studies suggest that transmission from a distance greater than six feet explains a significant number of COVID-19 superspreading outbreaks. Because of this,...
New Paper: Toward Integrating Numeric Disease Transmission Risk in Energy Code and Ventilation Standards
What if every building you entered was filtering out airborne pathogens, harmful particulates, and actively monitoring the microbial particles in the air all while saving energy? We have a new paper out on how standards can be updated to require safer air in energy...
Congratulations to Interim Director Mark Fretz!
Our very own Mark Fretz is now the interim director of IHBE. Congratulations Mark! See the letter from the Dean of the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, Adrian Parr: Dear colleagues and friends, It is with tremendous excitement that I write to you...
Congratulations to Dean Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg
IHBE Director Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg has accepted a new position as Dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska and will begin the new role January 2023. We wish him well on his new journey, as he leaves with a legacy of significant work that...
New Award: Housing Energy Upgrades through Hacienda Development
IHBE & ESBL are working as a team with PAE Engineers to help over a 1000 people in low-income housing save on their energy bills and have better health. Well- that’s the side effect of our research. Funded by the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) and led by...
Growing Food on Buildings? New Proposal Submitted
Imagine a city with crops on every rooftop. This might seem odd at first, but 80% of food will be consumed in cities by 2050, which means city-goers need to become city-growers if we want to have resilience in the wake of food supply chain shortages. During the...
A New Horizon for Acoustics & Affordable Housing: University of Oregon Awarded $16 Million for Research
The Institute for Health in the Build Environment and the University of Oregon has been awarded more than $16 million in federal funds to build a state-of-the-art acoustics research facility and create affordable housing prototypes. The funds are part of a major...
Professor Van Den Wymelenberg to be a panelist at August 18th National Academies Indoor Air Workshop – Sign Up Now!
The pandemic made indoor air quality management an urgent issue for many. On average, Americans spend 70% of the day indoors. What is the quality of the indoor air we breathe, and how can we manage it? Register now for this workshop on improving indoor air quality...
Professor Judith Sheine Represents UO Design Research on Housing, Climate and Resilience to U.S. Delegation
The U.S. Select Committee on the Climate Crisis recently visited the Port of Portland's T2 site, the location for the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition's EDA Build Back Better funding proposal, and Professor Judith Sheine was on hand to discuss the innovative work on...
Our mission is to develop new design concepts for the realization of healthy and sustainable inhabited space. We do this by forming unconventional transdisciplinary collaborations that conduct research where architecture, biology, medicine, chemistry, and engineering intersect and translate it into design practice through a consortium of invested industry partners. Our understanding of what a “healthy building” constitutes – from its complex microbiome, its chemistry, its provision of light and air, and its energy and carbon footprint – is fragmented, underdeveloped, and too often not reflected in practice. The Institute for Health in the Built Environment pursues an integrated approach to conducting and applying research so that every built environment provides health at multiple scales, from individual to planetary. IHBE is dedicated to focusing on equity for individuals and communities who face health disparities due to the creation and operation of built environments.
IHBE has collaborated with:
Researchers
Disciplines
Institutions
Students
IHBE researchers to present two papers at Building Sim 2023
Two research papers have been accepted to the Building Simulation 2023 conference in Shanghai, China. Both papers introduce simulation-based research on circadian health potential in the workplace and disseminate the findings from projects between Baker, ESBL, and...
IHBE returns from opening the Transpecies Design Exhibit at the 2023 Venice Biennale that is featured in Dezeen
IHBE Interim Director Fretz recently returned from Venice to help setup and launch the University of Oregon's Transpecies Design Exhibition, curated by College of Design Dean Adrian Parr. The exhibition is part of the Time, Space, Existence show organized by the...
IHBE to participate in the 2023 Venice Biennale
The Institute for Health in the Built Environment will be contributing to an exhibition on Transpecies Design, curated by College of Design Dean Adrian Parr, in the 2023 Venice Biennale. The Institute will feature over a decade of work by the Biology and the Built...
Agriculture in the Built Environment: IHBE Awarded Grant
Crops on rooftops, walls, and inside buildings? We want to find out what's possible for growing food in cities, and what barriers are stopping urban agriculture. Dr. Gwynne Mhuireach has been awarded nearly a million dollars from the USDA to provide solutions for...