Sep 13, 2026 · 47 min · 13 segments
Welcome to part one of my conversations with Ed May. Ed, is a partner at Building Type, a design consulting firm that concentrates on passive house energy modeling and successfully guiding projects…
Ed MayGuestRobbyHostGoing back to your professor's comment that it's a little short-sighted and that there seems to be some understanding now, not necessarily in the architecture world, but outside the architecture world, that there needs to be a better blend between education in true architecture, education in how to actually put buildings together, and then incorporating the building science.
Did you have any building science training at Parsons?
They had a fantastic design build, so we did some great summer design build programs.
They had absolutely amazing faculty, and they had good mix of practical and theoretical instruction.
The notion that you can sort of cram that into three years is almost preposterous on its face.
And so I am sympathetic to the curriculum designers where there's just so many things that you want to teach.
In particular, there were two faculty members, Henry Gifford and Chris Benedict, who were pioneers in the high-performance construction space in New York City.
They taught one of my first classes in, I don't know, 2005, 2004, somewhere in that era.
Going back to your professor's comment that it's a little short-sighted and that there seems to be some understanding now, not necessarily in the architecture world, but outside the architecture world, that there needs to be a better blend between education in true architecture, education in how to actually put buildings together, and then incorporating the building science.
Did you have any building science training at Parsons?
They had a fantastic design build, so we did some great summer design build programs.
They had absolutely amazing faculty, and they had good mix of practical and theoretical instruction.
The notion that you can sort of cram that into three years is almost preposterous on its face.
And so I am sympathetic to the curriculum designers where there's just so many things that you want to teach.
In particular, there were two faculty members, Henry Gifford and Chris Benedict, who were pioneers in the high-performance construction space in New York City.
They taught one of my first classes in, I don't know, 2005, 2004, somewhere in that era.
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