Hongxi Yin is the InCEES associate professor in advanced building systems and architectural design. He was the first Chinese LEED certified expert on green community development.
Yin’s primary research interests are whole building performance analysis, passive technology application, human health and productivity, and integrated design methods for sustainability.
Yinis also a professor in an advanced building systems and architectural design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.
In 2013, he served as site operation manager for Solar Decathlon China. The highly competitive program challenges university teams to design, build and operate attractive and affordable net-zero-energy houses powered by the sun. Yin and senior lecturer Pablo Moyano are leading a fall 2015 studio in developing a submittal for the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, which will be held in Orange County, CA, in 2017.
Over the last year, a team of architects, medical professionals and engineers from Washington University in St. Louis and Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have explored questions about building design and people’s health through interdisciplinary design studios and seminars. Now that research is bearing fruit. On Nov. 11, a new Smart Home for Occupational Therapy Healing — aka SMOOTH House — will break ground in St. Louis’ Delmar Maker District.
The built environment often shapes the spread of disease. Many early cases of COVID-19, the 2019 novel coronavirus, centered on a seafood market in Wuhan City, China. Airports, hospitals and other gathering points can easily become sites of virus transmission. But as the world grapples with the COVID-19 outbreak, Hongxi Yin, associate professor in advanced building systems and architectural design at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring whether using portable furnaces to sterilize contaminated building exhaust might help to stem the contagion.
Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. Billions of tons are produced annually. But for the 2017 Solar Decathlon, Team WashU wanted to demonstrate a new and more sustainable approach.
Concrete is durable, inexpensive and ubiquitous. But is it sustainable? That question is being put to the test as students from the Sam Fox School Design & Visual Arts and the School of Engineering & Applied Science prepare for Solar Decathlon 2017.
