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Person: Kate Simonen

Center for Integrated Design

The University of Washington Center for Integrated Design (CID) promotes a healthy, energy efficient built environment through research, education and outreach initiatives. 

The University of Washington Center for Integrated Design includes the Integrated Design Lab (IDL), the Discovery Commons, and the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF). The Center’s mission is to advance the highest performing built environment that better serves environmental and human health through research, technical assistance, education and outreach. The Center is anchored by the Integrated Design Lab which delivers its mission through the three core services of: discovery through research; guidance through technical assistance; and advocacy through education and outreach.

The Center and the Integrated Design Lab are supported by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE), The National Science Foundation (NSF), The UW Campus Sustainability Fund, Puget Sound Energy, AIA Seattle, The Bullitt Foundation, and innovative building owners, designers, and operators in the Pacific Northwest region and nationally. 

Operating out of its own ‘living laboratory’, the Center is a self-sustaining service located at the Bullitt Center in Seattle, WA– the greenest commercial building in the world.

Podcast: Leveraging the Life Cycle Assessment for Useful Carbon Accounting

Kate Simonen joins the NORI podcast to share the ins and outs of life cycle assessments, or LCAs. Kate Simonen is a carbon accounting expert and professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington. As a licensed architect and structural engineer, she has an extensive background in high-performance building systems, seismic design and retrofitting, and net-zero energy construction. Kate’s research is focused on environmental life cycle assessment and innovative construction materials and methods. She is also the founding…

Kate Simonen

Kathrina (Kate) Simonen is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington, founder and board chair of the nonprofit Carbon Leadership Forum and leader of the Life Cycle Lab. Licensed as an architect and structural engineer, she connects significant professional experience in high performance building design and technical expertise in environmental life cycle assessment working to accelerate the transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to materials (also known as embodied carbon) used in buildings and infrastructure.

She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an honorary fellow of the UK’s Institution of Structural Engineers and was named Engineering News Record Top 25 Newsmaker in 2020 for her impact rallying industry to reduce embodied carbon. Taking an entrepreneurial approach to academic work she helped launch two successful nonprofits, CLF and Building Transparency; spurred the formation of two embodied carbon commitment programs, SE2050 and MEP 2040; and develops and sustains networks of individuals and organizations working together to harmonize and optimize embodied carbon actions.

UW’s Life Cycle Lab is focused on supporting the next generation of researchers and pursuing critical research to advance life cycle assessment (LCA) data, methods and approaches. The research that we pursue aims to fill challenging knowledge gaps in order to inform impactful policies that support the integration of life cycle thinking, LCA findings and decarbonization strategies to implement into practice today.