Kiel Moe (MDes ’03), associate professor of architecture and energy at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award for the 2016–2017 academic year. During his time as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair, Moe will travel to Finland to extend his research on the thermal, ecological, and architectural capacities of large-scale wood buildings. His research will be in association with the Wood Program at Aalto University’s Department of Architecture in Helsinki, and with the Wood Program’s director Pekka Heikkinen.
The Fulbright Scholar Program writes that, of the 20 programs that it offers, the Distinguished Chair Awards “are viewed as among the most prestigious appointments” in the program. The honor is awarded to eminent scholars who have significant publication and teaching records.
“I am honored to receive this Fulbright award,” Moe says. “The time and space in Finland will afford an excellent opportunity to further develop my work on the otherwise unarticulated trans-scalar thermodynamics of wood architecture.”
Moe’s Fulbright research will build directly on his current research, pedagogy, and publications. He most recently coauthored The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture: Energy Analysis in the August 2015, and his forthcoming Empire. State. Building. and What is Energy and How [Else] Might We Think About It? (with Sanford Kwinter) will appear in 2016.
In addition to his role as associate professor of architecture and energy, Moe is codirector of the GSD’s Master in Design Studies (MDes) program and codirector of the Energy, Environments & Design research lab. His research and pedagogy focus on an agenda for design and energy that is at once more ecologically and architecturally ambitious. As such, he focuses on both buildings as manifestations of large scale energy systems as well as overlooked and discrete thermal parameters in buildings that yet have great impact on the power and thermodynamic depth of architecture.
Moe’s previous awards include the Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture, the Architecture League of New York Prize, the AIA National Young Architect award, and numerous design awards for individual projects from the AIA, North American Wood Design Awards, and Boston Society of Architects, among others.