Metropolis Initiative Seminar

Sustainable Neighborhood Design: Science Advances and Case Studies

Presented by:
Gia Jung, Bin Yan, Snoweria Zhang // Google's Sidewalk Labs

Register here (lunch provided)

Time: Lunch – 12:00; Lecture – 12:30 to 1:30 pm

More about the talk: Sidewalk Labs is an Urban Innovation Unit within Google. Sidewalk Labs builds technology solutions for cities and real estate decision makers with a focus on creating a more sustainable and equitable built environment. This talk will focus on Delve - a computational design platform that helps private and public sector entities determine the highest and best use of a site across financial, quality of life, sustainability and regulatory factors – in minutes, using AI and generative design. Delve is now integrated with Google Earth to empower users in real estate and clean energy sectors to make sustainable decisions – for buildings, neighborhoods and cities.

In this talk, the speakers will discuss how our platforms and research empower communities with computational insights derived from data, simulations, carbon estimation, and building energy modeling. All the speakers from Sidewalk Labs are researchers and computational designers and scientists in Architecture, with previous academic research and teaching experiences.

Brief bios of the speakers:

Gia Jung is a computational designer at Sidewalk Labs. Previously, she served as Irving Innovation Fellow and Research Associate at the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), where she graduated with an M.Arch with awards in Digital Design. Her research area is in design technology, human-computer interaction, and computational design with the focus on AI application in design. She has worked on architectural and urban design and research projects across Europe, America, and Asia.

Bin Yan is currently serving as a Research Scientist at Sidewalk Labs and Google. Prior to Sidewalk Labs, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Her research includes developing a web platform for smart building applications and energy management. Her focus area includes Energy Modeling, HVAC System Optimization, Machine Learning, and Data Visualization.

Snoweria Zhang is a designer, artist, and mathematician. She currently works on Delve, a generative urban design platform, at Google. Previously, she has worked at Sidewalk Labs, Kohn Pedersen Fox’s Urban Interface team, and the MIT Senseable City Lab. Her work spans architecture, urbanism, computation, and technology. Snoweria's design was recently featured on the cover of Nature. Snoweria received her M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and B.A. from Harvard in Mathematics.  She has engaged with numerous architectural schools across the Northeastern USA. She also draws a webcomic called Lonesome Whales.