2022 Research Prize
Collective Comfort: Framing the Cooling Center as a Resiliency and Educational Hub for Communities in Desert Cities

American desert cities designed and built at the turn of the century in conjunction with the advent of air-conditioning technologies are able to house millions of Americans by relying primarily on fossil-fuel to supply relief from extreme hot weather. The Phoenix metro area, or The Valley of The Sun as it is known to locals, experienced 145 days reaching temperatures over 100˚F in 2020 according to the National Weather Service. The increased probability of a longer-lasting heatwave, combined with the over demand of electrical power supply during extreme weather events can be catastrophic, especially to the most vulnerable communities. This phenomenon, as evidenced by the ERCOT blackout that caused millions of individuals to go without energy supply during an extreme winter storm in Texas has made more tangible the risk that extreme weather events pose to a limited electrical supply.

Today, municipal government, local communities, and grassroots organizations, coupled with environmental researchers in the Phoenix metro area have taken note of the risks that heat poses to human livelihoods and are working to develop cooling centers as a strategy to deal with heat insecurity, especially in the most vulnerable communities. As the climate crisis brings more extreme temperatures to The Valley in combination with the need to reduce fossil-fuel reliance and the use of scarce water resources, “Collective Comfort” aims to develop a public program that rethinks the cooling center as an educational resilience hub. Furthermore, “Collective Comfort” aims to bring education on heat risk and weatherization efforts to the forefront, helping to destabilize the fossil-fuel reliant single-family home by providing alternative visions that foreground collectivity and community resilience in desert cities.

To address equitable cooling in relationship with an overreliance on private mechanical, electrically powered air-conditioning technologies, we propose to support interdisciplinary existing efforts by developing design principles and strategies that inform the cooling center as a resiliency and climate education hub. This year-long interdisciplinary endeavor proposes a research seminar (fall 2023) followed by an advanced collaborative architecture studio (spring 2024) that brings interdisciplinary partners from resiliency planning, engineering, and architecture in combination with community stakeholders to collaborate with graduate students in the development of “Collective Comfort” at the Yale School of Architecture. This research opportunity enables us to build academic, community, and design relationships that connect Arizona State University’s unique leadership in urban-heat analysis, the innovative design strength of Yale School of Architecture’s design thinking, and University of Houston’s new Climate Adaptation and Sustainable Communities Lab.

The Phoenix metro area, like many desert cities, is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme heat and limited electrical supply. Through the concept of “Collective Comfort,” we aim to rethink the cooling center as an educational resilience hub, providing alternative visions for addressing heat insecurity that prioritize collectivity and community resilience. This award is a tremendous opportunity for us to make a meaningful impact toward addressing equitable cooling in desert cities via the promotion of community resilience. Advancing aspects of climate adaptation is significant to us both as is the opportunity to work together in an interdisciplinary setting. Growing up in the Phoenix Metro area has motivated Gálvez to dedicate her research toward defining post-fossil fuel architectural forms that address comfort in relationship to new forms of collective living. For Munenzon, this project offers the possibility to learn from a community actively dealing with the risk of heat through collaborative methods of observation that promote inclusive dialogues. We are humbled to have the opportunity to support our local partners in this important work and look forward to the impact this project will have on heat-vulnerable communities in quickly warming desert cities and beyond.
Liz Gálvez and Dalia Munenzon

Collaborators

Melissa Guardaro is an assistant research professor in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and works for the Healthy Urban Environments Initiative (HUE) and Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER). Her research focuses on adaptation, equity, vulnerability, urban policy, and governance for the mitigation and adaptation to extreme heat and urban heat island effects. She is currently working with the City of Phoenix to formulate a comprehensive heat reduction strategy and with The Nature Conservancy, the Maricopa County Health Department, and community-based organizations to create neighborhood heat solutions that improve thermal comfort and public health outcomes, especially during extreme heat events.

Salmaan Craig is an assistant professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University. He researches how to turn biogenic building materials into heat-exchangers. This way, buildings could better harness ambient energy while locking away carbon for centuries ahead. Before McGill, Craig was a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He taught seminars on energy and materials. One course was on adaptive and hybrid materials with Joanna Aizenberg of the Wyss Institute. Craig also spent several years in the industry: first at Buro Happold, then at Foster + Partners. For Bloomberg’s new headquarters in London, he codeveloped the integrated ceiling, so the radiant cooling worked in tandem with buoyancy ventilation. He also worked on Apple’s new headquarters, the Masdar Institute, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.