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RECORD Hosts Fourth Sustainability in Practice Conference at MIT

Sustainability in Practice Boston 2026 speakers — Photo © Kelvin Ramirez Ovalle
Pictured from left to right: Michael Murphy, founder AMMA; Andrew Barnett, partner Hopkins Architects; AIA EVP/CEO Carole Wedge.

In a post-blizzard Boston last week, architects and allied design professionals came together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new Schwarzman College of Computing for Architectural Record’s fourth annual Sustainability in Practice (SiP) Conference at the school. The daylong event featured an array of topics including creating longevity in the built environment, disaster preparedness, and problem solving in architecture across diverse materials, stakeholders, and locations.

Sustainability in Practice Conference MIT, 2002

Photo © Kelvin Ramirez Ovalle

AISC presentation. Photo © Kelvin Ramirez Ovalle

The day kicked off with a presentation on the venue itself. SOM senior associate principal Georgi Petrov spoke about the structural and sustainable aspects of the double-skin facade building, completed in 2024. He was joined by structural steel specialist Jonathan Tavarez of the American Institute of Steel Construction. Following that, Structural Stone, which worked with landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand on aspects of the Schwarzman building’s streetscape, offered insights on how to achieve sustainable building goals using natural stone. Germany-based iF Design, which had just announced the winners of its annual design awards, discussed the increased focus on sustainability within the 73-year-old institution, and design in general, in a conversation with iF global head of sustainability and impact Lisa Gralnek and Solen Works cofounder Gunnar Hubbard, moderated by RECORD editor in chief Josephine Minutillo. Presentations on building performance by Tate and on modeling carbon by Autodesk, rounded out the day.

Panel discussion with (left to right) Josephine Minutillo, Lisa Gralnek, and Gunnar Hubbard. Photo © Kelvin Ramirez Ovalle

Headlining speakers included London-based Andrew Barnett of Hopkins Architects, who spoke about the firm’s restoration and extension of Josep Lluis Sert’s Smith Campus Center at nearby Harvard, and about another Schwarzman building, at Oxford— the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, featured on the cover of RECORD’s November 2025 issue. That project has since officially achieved certification to the Passivhaus building standard for very-low-energy construction. It is Europe’s largest Passivhaus university building, and the world’s first Passivhaus concert hall.

Michael Murphy, known for co-founding MASS Design Group, spoke about some of the projects he completed there, including the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, but also about how projects like that one led him to seek a different model of architecture that could give practitioners more agency, which resulted in the founding of AMMA. His talk was titled Immortal Spaces, also the title of his upcoming book and a symposium he will host through Georgia Tech, where he is currently the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair of Architectural Design.

MIT associate professors Miho Mazereeuw (1) and Brandon Clifford (2). Photos © Kelvin Ramirez Ovalle

Professors and researchers at MIT have always played a significant role at SiP, and this year was no different. Associate professor Brandon Clifford offered a look at humans’ impact on the built environment throughout thousands of years, and into the future. Associate professor Miho Mazereeuw’s recent book, Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness, was the foundation for her talk, which was fittingly preceded by remarks from new AIA executive vice president and CEO Carole Wedge, who spoke to some of the organization’s resources with respect to preparedness, among other topics.

RECORD will next host SiP at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago on September 23, 2026. Please check here to get updates about that event. We hope to see you there.