51吃瓜网

Dr. Naomi Keena is Assistant Professor and Professional Program Director at 51吃瓜网鈥檚 Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture. She is the founding director of McGill鈥檚 award-winning TRACE Lab, the Think-tank and Research in Architecture and Circular Economy lab, where she leads a team of researchers investigating data driven, life cycle approaches to grand challenges such as Canada鈥檚 housing supply crisis and socio-ecological design in the building sector. SSHRC, CMHC, FRQSC, Mitacs and UNEP support TRACE Lab鈥檚 research projects. She holds a Ph.D. in Architectural Sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and conducted her Postdoctoral training at Yale University. Keena is a Fulbright Fellowship recipient and has published and presented her research widely. She is a lead author of the UNEP report 鈥楤uilding Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future鈥� (2023). Her research has been published in many peer-review journals such as Technology I Architecture + Design (TAD); Sustainable Cities and Society; Journal of Industrial Ecology; Cleaner Engineering and Technology; Energy and Buildings; Energies; the Journal of Ecological Modelling; the Journal of Electronic Imaging; book chapters in 鈥楨mbodied Energy and Design鈥� (Lars M眉ller Publishers 2017) and 鈥楬andbook of Sustainability Science in the Future: Policies, Technologies and Education by 2050鈥� (Springer 2022); as well as a book co-authored with Dr. Avi Friedman titled 鈥楥ircular Economy and Sustainable Housing鈥� (Routledge 2024) and a book co-edited of the Proceedings for the 2024 World Sustainable Built Environment Conference (IOP 2024). Her scholarship on circular economy in the built environment has contributed to numerous research reports including the UN One Planet Network, Sustainable Building and Construction (SBC) Programme鈥檚 鈥楪lobal State of Play: Circularity in the Built Environment鈥� 2020 report where she authored the regional report for North America, and the UNEP and Yale University CEA Report 鈥� Biomaterials to Support the Transition to a Circular Built Environment in the Global South (2022)鈥�.

Keena鈥檚 research focuses on broadening the space and time upon which we consider architectural and urban design, to understand both the work of the techno-sphere in constructing our urban environments and that of the geo-biosphere in sustaining such development. She combines life cycle approaches to design with data visualization and computational techniques as a means to assess socio-ecological factors in architecture and to transform complex data streams into organized knowledge. Keena鈥檚 work has been published and presented in the areas of architecture, data visualization, life cycle approaches and circular economy, design-driven interdisciplinary research, and environmental policy.

Keena鈥檚 research has led to the development of many data and computational frameworks. One such framework is Clark鈥檚 Crow, a parametric tool that aims to promote awareness of the impact of different architectural design options through a biophysically-based ecological accounting method in the early stages of design-development. Working in an interdisciplinary realm, Keena co-founded another such framework named SEVA (Socio-Ecological Visual Analytics), a proposed new conceptual network of analytical techniques designed to quantify, visualize, characterize, and communicate socio-ecological factors within our built environments. Her doctoral research on SEVA was part of a large interdisciplinary effort named 鈥淒ata Journey鈥� which received three grant awards from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was showcased at the international Grand Challenges meetings in New Delhi, London, and Washington D.C. Currently, SEVA technology is used by amongst others, the UN Environment鈥檚 World Environment Situation Room and the UNCCD Great Green Wall project and was showcased at the 2020 World Economic Forum. As PI with co-PI Friedman, Keena developed 鈥楧ata Homebase鈥� a web application that visualizes Canada鈥檚 housing characteristics via 鈥楬ousing Passports鈥�. The web app. aims to support the transition to a circular economy in Canada鈥檚 housing towards more affordable and environmental-conscious housing. CMHC supported the Data Homebase project as part of the Housing Supply Challenge Data-Driven round.

At McGill,the primary aim of Keena鈥檚 design pedagogy is to bring a shift towards ecosystem design thinking through a set of courses, seminars and studios, layered with the diversity of interdisciplinary and systems thinking. She has previously taught environmental design, advanced graduate studio and PhD seminars at Yale School of Architecture and undergraduate studios and graduate level computational design modules at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, UK. Keena has also mentored computer science and architecture students through the undergraduate research program at RPI.

Prior to joining McGill, Keena was a scientific researcher and postdoctoral associate at Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA), and lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture. As a founding member of Yale CEA, Keena worked on numerous research projects in the areas of data visualization and immersive environments as well as biomaterials and circular economies and represented the center at numerous international events including the UN Habitat 10th World Urban Forum, Abu Dhabi. At Yale CEA, she completed, in collaboration with Gray Organschi Architects, UN Environment and UN Habitat, the Ecological Living Module (ELM) to address the challenges of both climate change migration and the need for affordable housing in the face of rapid urbanization. This ecological modular home was showcased on the UN Plaza in NYC during the High-Level Political Forum to demonstrate how onsite clean energy, water, indoor air quality, urban micro-farming, bio-based renewable materials, and waste management could be integrated into the housing unit itself. The ELM won several awards, including Architect Magazine鈥檚 Residential Architect Design Award in 2018. Keena鈥檚 post-doctoral research on data visualization contributed to a body of work including the design and development of Yale CEA鈥檚 BEEM lab immersive visualization environment at Yale School of Architecture as well as serving as track chair for Immersive Visualizations at IEEE Games, Entertainment and Media (GEM) Conference 2019, Yale University.

She holds a professional architecture degree from University College Dublin, Ireland, a M.Sc. Arch. from Pratt Institute, a post-professional MArch II degree in Environmental Parametrics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and a Ph.D. in Architectural Sciences from the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), RPI. Prior to her Ph.D. studies, Keena worked in professional practice with internationally renowned firms in both the US and Europe including the 2020 Pritzker Prize winning Grafton Architects in Dublin.