Alan Organschi

Alan Organschi is a principal and partner at GOA, an architectural practice in New Haven, Connecticut recognized internationally for its integration of design, construction, and environmental research in work that spans in scale from small demonstration projects in micro-housing to global environmental analysis.

In April 2021, Mr. Organschi was appointed Director of the Innovation Labs at the Bauhaus Earth an interdisciplinary initiative based in Berlin, Germany focused on the transformation of buildings and infrastructure from a major source of anthropogenic environmental impact and social inequity into a climate restorative and ecologically regenerative means to meet the housing and infrastructural needs of a rapidly urbanizing global population.

Mr. Organschi continues as a senior member of the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture where he has taught architectural design and building science for two decades and now directs the Yale Building Lab. He has written and lectured extensively on the carbon storage benefits of biogenic material substitution and circular economic strategies in urban building. He is a co-author of the recently published book Carbon: A Field Manual For Building Designers and the scientific paper “Buildings as a Global Carbon Sink” published in the journal Nature Sustainability in January 2020 and winner of the Aquila Capital Transformation Award for contributions to the decarbonization of Europe.

In addition to their firm’s national and regional awards for a range of architectural projects, Mr. Organschi and his partner Elizabeth Gray were honored for their work with an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Miguel Amado

Miguel Amado began his professional career in 1982 at the Ministry of Finance. After completing a degree in Architecture at the Lisbon Faculty of Architecture, in 1991 he began teaching at NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He completed his master’s degree in Spatial Planning and Environment in 1995. In 1995 he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, NOVA School of Science and Technology. In 2004, he completed his PhD in Environmental Sciences at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UNL). In 2015 he obtained the Habilitation Degree in Architecture from Técnico, where he became an Associate Professor in 2016. He was appointed Full Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment in 2023.

In 1988 he founded the company Miguel Amado Arquitectos, Lda, and in 2005 he set up the GEOTPU.LAB research group. In addition to architecture and urbanism, the group focuses on the sustainable urban planning process as a link between the transformation of the built environment and urb §an development models in CPLP countries. In 2012, he started a new line of research with the support of the International Energy Agency, which aims to better plan cities towards a neutral balance between consumption and production. He was an elected member of Barreiro Municipality, President of the National Fiscal Council of the Portuguese Architects’ Association, CEO of Simarsul, SA, and Managing Director of Sinespaço, SA.

He was a member of the Executive Committee of DECivil at IST from 2017 to 2020, and Vice-President of Técnico for Facilities and Equipment from 2021 to 2023.