A portrait of a man in a suit and glasses in front of a lawn and buildings; Dennis Shelden
A Q+A with Dennis Shelden, RPI’s Center for Architecture Science and Ecology new director

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) has announced that architect and entrepreneur Dennis Shelden will be taking over as its director. The academic-industrial research and teaching alliance, focused on using technology to address concerns of “built ecology,” was founded in 2007, and is located across RPI’s main campus in Troy, New

Rendering of a table with succulents in the foreground of a sleek white interior with purple and blue lighting
The solar-powered FutureHAUS is coming to Times Square

New housing is coming to Times Square, at least temporarily. The Virginia Tech team of students and faculty behind the FutureHAUS, which won the Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018, a competition supported by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and U.S. Department of Energy, will bring a new iteration of its solar-powered home to New

This gravity-powered battery could be the future of energy storage

Over the last decade, the renewable energy industry has boomed due to the proliferation of new technology that is reducing the cost of construction and long-term operability. However, one critical problem still remains: storing renewable energy during lulls in wind speed or sun exposure is often prohibitively expensive. In response to this issue, Energy Vault, a subsidiary of California’s IdeaLab,

This O-Wind Turbine could bring wind harvesting to urban settings

Harvesting wind energy within urban environments remains a frustrating task. Wind tunnels created by increasingly prevalent tall buildings throw air currents in multi-directional gusts, rendering most conventional turbines relatively useless as they can only capture wind flows moving in a single direction. In pursuit of establishing an efficient tool for harvesting wind energy within cities,

Mexico is building Latin America’s largest solar installation

While the current American government squanders time and opportunity in the pursuit of short-term profit by imposing disruptive tariffs and curtailing sustainability-focused goals, Mexico is powering ahead with a broad effort to generate up to 35 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2024. As a part of that transformative effort—until recent years, Mexico’s energy industry operated as an oil-forward,

Solar panels get a much-needed design makeover

Let’s face it: no one has ever characterized a solar panel as being particularly attractive. In fact, they’re eyesores. While the environmental and business cases for photovoltaics are relatively easy to make, their aesthetic dimension has long been a losing proposition. “In states like California, solar is half the price of the local utility, even