Event presented by Reimagine Buildings Collective
Tuesday, September 1st from 12pm-1:30pm eastern (Virtual)
Kritika Kharbanda has emerged as one of the most compelling voices at the intersection of high-performance design and material carbon. As Associate and Global Head of Sustainability at Henning Larsen, she works on buildings that combine rigorous performance with natural materials to dramatically cut embodied carbon. The work is technically serious and visually stunning.
The Summer Sessions continue with Kritika in conversation with interviewer Michael Ingui, digging into three challenges shaping her current work: rethinking cooling shelters and the local red tape that slows new cooling technology from reaching cities, scaling bio-based materials through a NYSERDA-funded project and the barriers that come with it, and designing high-performance, low-embodied-carbon facades—including a hard look at what could realistically replace aluminum mullions or phasing specs.
About Kritika Kharbanda
Kritika Kharbanda leads the sustainability initiatives for Henning Larsen's global team. Her passion, training, and experience lie at the intersection of architecture, sustainability, and technology, arming her to develop and inform sustainability goals and concepts as part of strategic visioning, programming, and the earliest phases of design. Her skillset ranges from energy and carbon benchmarking for life cycle, indoor environmental quality mapping, and urban analysis like microclimate and thermal comfort, along with other computational workflows for evidence-based design. She also supports projects targeting LEED, Living Building Challenge, WELL and other certifications.
Kritika received her Masters in Design with specialization in Energy and Environments from Harvard with cross-enrollment at MIT, and was a Social Innovation and Change Initiative Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Her commitments within the broader building science community include contributing to the global Carbon Leadership Forum, International Building Performance Simulation Association(IBPSA), and local carbon-focused policy efforts in Boston and New York City. Kritika is also on the advisory board for Pathways, a climate-tech seed-stage startup using AI for downstream emission reduction.
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The Reimagine Buildings Collective is where we bring together builders, designers, and changemakers driven to create healthy, climate-ready buildings so that we can share hard-won lessons, level up our practices, and build the networks we need to thrive. Join us!