Dorit Aviv

Dorit Aviv, PhD, AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, specializing in sustainability and environmental perforamnce. She is the director of the Thermal Architecture Lab, a cross-disciplinary laboratory at the intersection of thermodynamics, architecture and material science. Her work examines paths to decarbonization of the built environment through design and policy. Specifically, she looks at the potential synergies between renewable environmental forces and architectural materials and forms, and their impact on buildings' energy performance, air quality, and human health.

She has been awarded a Holcim Award for Sustainable Design and Construction for a prototype of passive cooling in desert climate developed in collaboration with the University of Arizona and Princeton Unviersity and supported by a Microsoft Industry Grant. Other current projects include a net-zero off-grid floating lab on the East River, a Wharton-Ripple Research grant for monitoring energy usage across the Penn campus using distributed ledger technology, and a radiant cooling pavilion in Singapore, achieving below dewpoint surface cooling with no condensation, a collaborative project with Princeton, UBC, ETH, and UC Berkeley.

Aviv holds a PhD in architectural technology (energy and computation track) from Princeton University, an M.Arch degree with a certificate in urban policy from Princeton University, and a B.Arch from The Cooper Union. Prior to Penn, she taught at The Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and Princeton University. She is a licensed architect and has practiced in design roles at Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, KPF, and Atelier Raimund Abraham. She is a participant of the current 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, was the co-curator of the energy pavilion in the 2017 Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism and had previously exhibited at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and the New Museum Ideas City. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Tides Foundation and Microsoft. Her research papers have been published in leading scientific jounrals such as Applied Energy, Indoor Air, and Urban Climate.

Her recent peer reviewed publications include:

Aviv, Dorit, Kian Wee Chen, Eric Teitelbaum, Denon Sheppard, Jovan Pantelic, Adam Rysanek, and Forrest Meggers. "A fresh (air) look at ventilation for COVID-19: Estimating the global energy savings potential of coupling natural ventilation with novel radiant cooling strategies." Applied Energy 292 (2021): 116848.

Aviv, Dorit, Hongshan Guo, Ariane Middel, and Forrest Meggers. "Evaluating radiant heat in an outdoor urban environment: Resolving spatial and temporal variations with two sensing platforms and data-driven simulation." Urban Climate 35 (2021): 100745.

Meggers, Forrest, Dorit Aviv, Victor Charpentier, Eric Teitelbaum, Adam Ainslie, and Sigrid Adriaenssens. "Co-optimization of solar tracking for shading and photovoltaic energy conversion." In Proceedings of the 15th IBPSA Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA, pp. 7-9. 2017.

Aviv, Dorit, Julie Gros, Hayder Alsaad, Eric Teitelbaum, Conrad Voelker, Jovan Pantelic, and Forrest Meggers. "A Data-Driven Ray Tracing Simulation for Mean Radiant Temperature and Spatial Variations in the Indoor Radiant Field with Experimental Validation." Energy and Buildings (2021): 111585.

Hou, Miaomiao, Jovan Pantelic, and Dorit Aviv. "Spatial analysis of the impact of UVGI technology in occupied rooms using ray‐tracing simulation." Indoor air (2021).

Aviv, Dorit, Aletheia Ida, et al. “Hydrogel-Based Evaporative and Radiative Cooling Prototype for Hot-Arid Climates.” Proceedings of the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, May 27 2020: 273-280.

Teitelbaum, Eric, Kian Wee Chen, Dorit Aviv et al. “Membrane-Assisted Radiant Cooling for Expanding Thermal Comfort Zones Globally without Air Conditioning.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 18, 2020, 202001678. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001678117

Aviv, Dorit, Nicholas Houchois, and Forrest Meggers. “Thermal Reality Capture.” ACADIA 2019 Proceedings. Austin, TX, 2019. http://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/acadia19_338.pdf

Aviv, Dorit, Eric Teitelbaum et al. “Generation and Simulation of Indoor Thermal Gradients: MRT for Asymmetric Radiant Heat Fluxes.” Proceedings of Building Simulation 2019: International Building Performance Association, Rome, 2019:381-388 http://www.ibpsa.org/proceedings/BS2019/BS2019_210702.pdf

Aviv, Dorit. “No Longer an Object: Thermodynamics and New Dimensions of Architectural Design.” 107th ACSA Annual Meeting: Black Box Proceedings. Pittsburgh, PA, 2019.

Guo, Hongshan, Dorit Aviv et al. “On the understanding of the Mean Radiant Temperature within both the indoor and outdoor environment, a critical review.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 108 (2019): 365-378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2019.06.014

Aviv, Dorit, and Axel Kilian. “Climate-Adaptive Volume: Solving the Motion Envelope of a Reconfigurable Cooling Aperture for Desert Climate.”  Technology| Architecture+ Design 2, no. 2 (2018): 186-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751448.2018.1497367

Aviv, Dorit, and Eric Teitelbaum. “Thermally Informed Bending: Relating Curvature to Heat Generation Through Infrared Sensing.” Humanizing Digital Reality, Springer, Singapore, 2018: 361–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6611-5_31

Aviv, Dorit, and Forrest Meggers. “Cooling Oculus for Desert Climate – Dynamic Structure for Evaporative Downdraft and Night Sky Cooling.” CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts – Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale 122, no. Supplement C (2017): 1123–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00038628.2019.1566112