Pamela Cabrera together with Michelle Lee and Ryan Maruyama from Behnisch Architekten, will present their research and paper, “The Geometry of Water: Shaping Terra Cotta for Evaporative Cooling in Urban Heat Islands,” at the Advances in Architectural Geometry (AAG) 2025 conference in Boston. The symposium will take place on Wednesday, November 19, on MIT’s campus.
Pamela and team will be sharing insights from a multi-year research collaboration that explores how geometry and material behavior can drive new climate-responsive façade strategies. Their work investigates the potential of terra cotta façade cladding to improve thermal comfort in urban heat island (UHI) contexts. Partnering with U.S. fabricators Boston Valley Terra Cotta, the team examined how geometric techniques—such as shingling, pleating, folding, dimpling, and capillary geometries—combined with the natural porosity of terra cotta, can enhance evaporative cooling performance. The result is a market-ready façade system that leverages water and vegetation to buffer urban microclimates from heat stress in a four-season climate.
The research was carried out in collaboration with Behnisch Architekten, Transsolar KlimaEngineering, knippershelbig, and Tripyramid Structures, bringing together interdisciplinary expertise to address the challenges of urban heat resilience.