Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 2, Episode 19 /Nov 25, 2025
Why cooling the planet is the next big design problem
Michael Ermann, Virginia Tech
Nov 25, 2025 /Design & Practice
Why cooling the planet is the next big design problem
Michael Ermann is a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech and the founder of Amber Book, the study course a large share of American architects use to pass their licensing exams. He teaches building systems and acoustics. He is, in his own phrase, a technique determinist, and he has strong evidence about what the profession has been teaching wrong.
Michael Ermann, Professor at Virginia Tech and Founder of Amber Book and Olive Book, Virginia Tech
In this conversation
Why Michael built a business on the fact that architects are visual learners, and why acoustics got him hired.
His claim that you can tell instantly whether a project began as a model or a drawing, and that student process looks like it did twenty years ago.
Three things building science taught wrong, including thin horizontal wood screens that will not be parallel five years later in a wet climate.
The argument that cooling the planet, not merely reducing operational energy, is the design problem of the next decade.
You need to be at a level where you're not going to be bullied by your engineers because it's your building.
Michael Ermann
Chapters
Why buildings
How Michael came to buildings, and to teaching them.
Teaching online and in the studio
Running a licensing course for thousands while teaching a studio for a dozen.
How architects learn
Why architects learn by seeing, and what that means for how they should be taught.
The reflected ceiling plan
The drawing that reveals whether a building was thought through.
Three things taught wrong
The building-science lessons the profession got backwards.
By the numbers
Air conditioners in use worldwide
Michael says cooling the planet is the next design problem. The IEA expects the number of air conditioners to more than triple.
Source: IEA, The Future of Cooling (2018) ↗If more than 30% of your wall is window, there's nothing you can do to have a better than average building from an energy point of view.
Michael Ermann
Takeaways
More than 30 percent glazing and there is nothing left to do to beat an average building on energy. Everyone fixates on wall materials; the window is the decision.
As grids go renewable, operational energy matters less and embodied carbon matters more. The industry cannot double its square footage and expect efficiency to save it.
Know enough not to be bullied by your engineers. The rooftop equipment does not have to be visible, and the roof does not need six plumbing penetrations.
Everyone in the AEC industry knows a hundred stories just like that, especially from the greenwashing era.
Michael Ermann