Episode 111: Kayleigh Houde

Kayleigh Houde is an Associate Principal and Global Computational Projects Lead at Buro Happold, where she is responsible for the harmonized development of new technologies within the open-source coding platform BHoM. Her leadership extends to chairing the MEP 2040 Commitment, participating in the ECHO Project and ASHRAE Center of Excellence for Building Decarbonization. She is also a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Parametric Life Cycle Assessment. 

We spoke with Kayleigh soon after the MEP 2040 and Carbon Leadership Forum released The Beginner’s Guide to MEP Embodied Carbon, a critical resource for the community. “We have coalesced a lot of data to to bridge gaps for the MEP disciplines and provide clarity about the MEP impact,” she says.

Kayleigh’s technical leadership is paralleled by her deep commitment to collaboration across disciplines, evidenced in many ways, including her work with the ECHO work (to harmonize data across disciplines and certification programs) and an article she wrote for Architecture 2030’s Architect magazine column, Carbon Positive, as a letter from MEP to architecture.

Of the potential of computation in climate work and the built environment, Kayleigh is thoughtful: “Computers aren’t the thing,” she says. “They are the thing that gets you to the thing. Really, what computations helps you to solve are some of issues that we have in human collaboration. Sometimes we think we’re connecting but we are not really speaking the same language. Getting people to talk and collaborate a lot of the solution in the computational work.”