Buildings shape daily life. They influence the air people breathe, the energy we use, and the comfort of the spaces where we live and work. As environmental conditions shift, engineers and designers increasingly face a new challenge: creating buildings that can adapt to change.

To prepare students for that challenge, Northwestern Engineering is launching a new Architectural Engineering and Sustainable Design master's specialization that combines engineering, design, sustainability, and human-centered thinking across the built environment.

The specialization is offered within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Architecture, Engineering, and Design (AED) program. AED prepares students for advanced study in architecture, to be leaders in engineering design, or to pursue careers in a variety of fields related to the design, construction, and management of buildings and other structures.

The new master’s concentration builds on Northwestern's strengths in architectural engineering while emphasizing climate adaptation, building performance, and the relationship between buildings and the people who use them. 

“We understood that there is a growing demand from professionals to be trained in architectural engineering with expertise in sustainability,” said Giorgia Chinazzo, the AED program's director, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and director of the Controlled, Adaptive and Responsive (CARE) Laboratory.

“This is a truly interdisciplinary program that brings together architecture, structural engineering, building science, energy, and human behavior. It gives students an exciting opportunity to develop the knowledge and tools they will need to lead the sustainability transition in the built environment,” said Yu (Marco) Nie, Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Family Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Its launch also contributes directly to Northwestern’s broader strategic push—and growing leadership—in building climate-resilient communities.”

Faculty developed the program around the idea that sustainability should be embedded in the design process from the outset rather than added later as a final requirement. Students will learn to evaluate building performance at multiple scales, from individual materials and building systems to entire structures and urban environments.

The specialization includes three core courses. Chinazzo will teach CIV_ENV_388-1: Building Science: Fundamentals, which examines how buildings perform and affect occupants. Assistant professor Lucia Stein-Montalvo will teach CIV_ENV_395: Climate-Adaptive Design in the Built Environment, which focuses on structures that respond to changing conditions. Incoming faculty member Jackson Jewett will teach CIV_ENV_395: Towards Carbon-Neutral Built Environment, exploring strategies for reducing the environmental footprint of buildings and infrastructure.

Students also will choose from electives in sustainability, data science, AI, and machine learning while participating in a seminar series featuring professionals from architectural engineering, sustainability, and design.

“Students will be able to think about and apply sustainability principles across different scales, from the scale of materials to components, buildings, and the urban scale,” Chinazzo said.

At the center of the specialization is a question that is becoming increasingly important across the industry: How should we design buildings for a future that remains difficult to predict?

Aging infrastructure, changing weather patterns, and evolving community needs are forcing designers to think beyond static buildings. Rather than trying to anticipate every future scenario, engineers increasingly are developing structures that can respond as conditions change.

Students will be able to think about and apply sustainability principles across different scales, from the scale of materials to components, buildings, and the urban scale. Giorgia Chinazzo

“A lot of what we're doing now is asking how we adapt what we already have,” Stein-Montalvo said.

That approach shapes both Stein-Montalvo's research and her teaching. Through her Adaptive Structures Lab, she studies systems that respond dynamically to their surroundings, drawing inspiration from biological processes.

“The way humans breathe and sweat and respond to changing environmental stimuli—can we make our built environment do similar things?” Stein-Montalvo said.

That question reflects a broader shift in how engineers think about the built environment. Students in the specialization will examine how buildings interact with factors such as temperature, sunlight, wind, water, and sound, and how those interactions can be improved as conditions evolve over time.

Adaptation, however, is not only about responding to environmental conditions. It is also about responding to people.

Much of Chinazzo's research examines how buildings influence human health, well-being, performance, and behavior, as well as how people influence buildings’ performance. She said sustainability education has traditionally emphasized technical performance while paying less attention to how people experience are influenced by the spaces around them.

“The social and human-centric aspects are often left apart, so we will bring that into students’ education,” Chinazzo said.

That perspective runs throughout the curriculum, from building science and environmental performance to design strategies that account for occupant needs and preferences. Faculty members want students to think about buildings not simply as technical systems, but as environments that shape everyday experiences.

“The human side, and ethics as well, are integral,” Stein-Montalvo said. “Human-centered engineering concerns will be central.”

Human-centered engineering concerns will be central. Lucia Stein-Montalvo

The program does not include a formal internship requirement, but its seminar series will expose students to professionals working across architectural engineering, sustainability, and design. Faculty members said those industry connections are intended to help students understand potential career paths while connecting classroom concepts to real-world applications.

Industry demand helped drive the creation of the specialization. Faculty members said the program was developed in response to growing interest in professionals who can work at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and sustainability.

“There are more and more requests for these kinds of profiles from industry, and there is an actual need for people who understand these issues and can propose solutions,” Chinazzo said.

As students move through the program, they will develop the technical, analytical, and communication skills needed to work across disciplines while addressing complex challenges throughout the built environment.

For Chinazzo, the broader goal is ensuring future engineers and designers treat sustainability as part of the design process itself rather than a final box to check.

“To have a well-rounded sustainable design, it needs to be thought about from the first stages of the process,” she said.