Commencement '22: newly minted graduates tell their stories

Mark Ostow

View full image

Jack Rusk
Concord, California
MEM, School of the Environment
MArch, School of Architecture

How do environmental management and architecture intersect?
I study climate change and buildings—how to reduce carbon emissions from the built environment. I build data models to help architects, engineers, and contractors anticipate what different strategies might actually accomplish in reducing emissions. [They can use my models] to set goals for their projects and support their decisions with numbers, instead of just a best guess.  

Where will you go next?
San Francisco. A firm I’ve been working with [EHDD Architecture] took me in, along with the set of tools I’ve been working on. So I’ll live in-house as their climate strategist.  

Do you think the pandemic is affecting how we look at buildings?
I work in [Professor] Karen Seto’s lab here, and some of her grad students talk a lot about how the rapid urbanization happening around the world is increasing the likelihood of new zoonotic diseases like COVID emerging. So, I think we can’t separate changes in the built environment from the emergence of new diseases.

What have you discovered about New Haven?
In the nine-square grid that makes up downtown New Haven, the urban blocks are so large that you end up with a lot of leftover space in the middle, with a lot of nice twisty alleys. There’s nothing like that in California. And I’m a big fan of West Rock. It’s my favorite rock in New Haven.

Just in New Haven?
On the eastern seaboard!