Research Overview

Alejandro’s main research interests are sustainable architecture and the indoor environment – indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort – and its connections to health, urban and human behaviours to create healthy homes. Recently, Alejandro has developed an interest in the use of low-cost sensors as research tools and the effect that they could have on residential behaviour, design and human health & well-being.

Research Interests

Alejandro’s main research interests are sustainable architecture and its connections to health, urban and human behaviours. Through this, Alejandro explores the architectural design, energy efficiency methods, passive techniques and their impact on the indoor environment – indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort–, especially in homes and their relation to the urban environment to create healthy homes. Architecture has well responded to climate change mitigating the effects of the built environment, but its impact on health is usually left aside. Alejandro’s approach to architectural design seeks to improve the quality of life for all citizens in an ageing society, delivering sustainable interventions that take a “whole house” approach. Through this approach, Alejandro’s research focuses on delivering healthier indoor environments, considering the impact of bio-psychological-social aspects of health, interactions between resident behaviours and the built environment, climate change impacts, and energy efficiency methods interactions. Alejandro’s research interests also extend to the use of low-cost sensors as research tools and the effect that they could have on residential behaviour, design and human health & well-being.

Career Details

Alejandro is a Chartered Architect in the Americas, where he still has a small practice, mainly developing residential projects. Before coming to the UK, Alejandro was involved in large residential and commercial projects, social housing and real state consultancy. He started working while during his bachelor’s degree in Architecture from which he graduated as the best student of his generation. After working for a couple of years, Alejandro studied at M.Arch with a pathway in Zero-Energy Mass Customised Housing at the Glasgow School of Art and graduated with Merit.

After his Masters, Alejandro continued working in housing projects. In 2015, he returned to Glasgow to study his PhD, where he explored the use of low-cost indoor air quality monitors, health and Passivhaus homes. During his PhD, Alejandro worked as a Research Assistant at the Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit with Prof Tim Sharpe in several building performance evaluation projects, where he developed a deep interest on the impact of sustainable architecture on human health.

Alejandro has also collaborated with IKEA on a project to review their indoor air quality guidelines and produce a package of information for IKEA’s co-workers focusing on techniques to improve their quality of life.