Rajkovich
Nicholas Rajkovich, PhD, AIA
Assistant Professor - Department of Architecture
rajkovic@buffalo.edu - 317B Hayes Hall - (716) 829-6910
Nicholas Rajkovich speaking at the "From Sandy to Snowvember: Climate Change and Buildings in New York State Symposium" in 2016.
Nicholas B. Rajkovich, Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, investigates the intersection of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and adaptation to climate change. By studying how the built environment adapts to extreme weather and climate change, Rajkovich works to solve problems that may plague cities of the future.
Web: Resilient Buildings Lab
As a professor and mentor, Rajkovich puts an emphasis on one-to-one critiques and consultations with his students. Rajkovich also enjoys the challenges presented by a large class and finding ways to engage various learning styles, often involving his students in research on climate-resilient strategies for application by architects, engineers, planners, and policy makers.
Before joining the University at Buffalo, Rajkovich worked for a gas and electric company in California, PG&E. There, he was brought on to teach classes on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Disillusionment with his employer's efforts to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions led Rajkovich back to school to focus on policy work. Rajkovich would go on to earn his PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Michigan. He was also chair of the San Francisco American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment.
Prior to PG&E, Nicholas taught several courses on lighting, acoustics, and building systems in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. He also worked as an associate at Einhorn Yaffee Prescott in Albany, NY, where he helped architects and engineers reduce the overall environmental impact of buildings under contract to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the U.S. Department of State. He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.
We need to prepare communities to bounce back, or even bounce forward, so that they're in better shape to adapt to climate change.
- Nicholas Rajkovich on climate resilience
Latest design-build project adds to Silo City's regenerating landscape
In a barren field in the shadows of towering grain elevators at Silo City, a group of University at Buffalo architecture students have created a beautiful structure that will continue to evolve and take shape. And they did it amid the stops and starts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
UB architecture students use design to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in New York City
UB architecture students are leveraging the power of design to help New York City (NYC) build awareness of COVID-19 safety guidelines among a particularly at-risk population: residents of multi-family housing.
As the climate changes, architects and engineers need to design buildings differently
As climate change intensifies, much of the nation's building stock will need upgrading to strengthen it against flooding, snowstorms and other weather hazards.
Adapting buildings for a changing climate
April 16 - May 16 (please not the rescheduled dates/times)
Join the School of Architecture and Planning's Resilient Buildings Lab for a series of webinars focused on the impacts of climate change on New York State's building sector. Up to six AIA LU/HSW available.
Read More Recent News: Nicholas Rajkovich
2/3/20 "Weather Whiplash" Could Impact Your Projects
10/24/19 As the climate changes, architects and engineers need to design buildings differently
4/24/19 How an Ancestor of the Bicycle Relates to Climate Resilience
11/28/18 As rainfall intensifies, cities prepare for more stormwater
8/17/18 When rain is just as dangerous as drought
7/6/18 Coping with heat waves: 5 essential reads
2/13/18 Cleveland sees clean energy as tool for climate change resiliency
2/13/18 As the climate changes in Cleveland and beyond, clean energy can mitigate the effects
ARC 448/548: Passive House Prototype Design
This class will design a Prototype 100-year Passive House using green materials with low embodied energy. Investigations will build on the model of the Butterfly House, one of five Affordable House Prototypes--ranging in size from 250-to-1,226 square feet--developed in the past three semesters of Sun_Food_Water.
ARC 545: Ecological Practices Graduate Research Group Technical Methods Seminar
In the first half of this course, we will develop our own surveying tools in the shop to investigate a portion of Silo City in Buffalo, New York. Tools developed in the class will incorporate traditional remote sensing and surveying equipment (for position), digital and analog monitors (for phenomena), and will be recorded on a digital or paper template. In the second half of the course, students will learn to integrate and interpret these data using traditional software tools like GIS. The final project for the class will support the designs of the EP GRG studio; co-registration with the EP GRG studio is required.
ARC 241 / 541: Introduction to Environmental Systems
Overview on interrelationship of the physical environment and buildings, specifically examining site design and environmental technologies, as they relate to environmental building systems design. More specifically, will develop an ability to respond to site characteristics including urban context, developmental patterning, zoning, soils, topography, ecology, climate, and building orientation. Students will also be introduced to the environmental technologies of lighting and acoustics including criteria relating to concepts and analysis in support of building systems design. Includes lectures, labs, field work, readings, exams, and projects.
ARC 302: Architecture Design Studio 6
The second semester of the junior year focuses students on the development and refinement of an architectural design based on a deeper understanding of architectural space. The specific spatial qualifiers that we will address in studio are site, structure, and the integration of various building systems. Each of these topics will be examined to explore interrelationships of the various systems which comprise a building. The specific building type that students will be working on this semester is the design of a mixed use Bicycle Institute/Community Center on a site adjacent to the former Erie Canal in the Blackrock neighborhood of Buffalo, New York.
ARC 404: Passive House Prototype Design
The focus of this Class will be completing the development of a Prototype 100-year accessible Passive House using materials with low embodied energy. Investigations will build on the 778sf House designed in the Fall Semester.
ARC 545 SEM– From Remote to Near Sensing
In the first half of this course, we will develop our own surveying tools in the shop to investigate a portion of the abandoned Bethlehem Steel site Lackawanna, New York. Tools developed in the class will incorporate traditional remote sensing and surveying equipment (for position), digital and analog monitors (for phenomena), and will be recorded on a paper template.
ARC 241 / 541 - Introduction to Environmental Systems
Overview on interrelationship of the physical environment and buildings, specifically examining site design, solar design and environmental technologies, as they relate to energy-conscious design, environmental building systems design and sustainability. More specifically, will develop an ability to respond to site characteristics including urban context, developmental patterning, zoning, soils, topography, ecology, climate, and building orientation.
PhD Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan
Master of Architecture, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Architecture, Cornell University
Selected activities, honors and awards
U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon Competition, Irvine, California, 2015. (Martha Bohm, P.I.)
- 2nd Place overall (941.191/1000 points possible)
- 1st Place in the Comfort Zone, Commuting, and Energy Balance contests
American Institute of Architects, 2000—Present
American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers, 1997 – 2008; 2014—Present
- University at Buffalo Student Branch Advisor, 2015—Present
United States Green Building Council, 2002—Present
Society of Building Science Educators (SBSE), 2000—Present
Climate change, according to Rajkovich, is a "tremendously difficult thing that our field is going to deal with."
The challenge is not limited to new construction, but the hundreds of thousands of buildings with outdated, inefficient systems. Buildings account for one-third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. "I would like to see our profession prosper, but they will have to step up. This is something that we should be leading and have a strong hand in."
A fire following Hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused extensive damage in Breezy Point, New York.
Smart & Connected Management of Thermal Extremes
The Community Resilience Lab led by Zoé Hamstead and Nicholas Rajkovich, along with collaborators from ASU and Temple University, examine different ways in which extreme heat and cold impact U.S. cities.
In collaboration with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), this series of reports lead by Nicholas Rajkovich help New York's policymakers, architects, builders, building owners and managers, and residents understand the impacts climate change has on the State's building sector.
TOPICS: Faculty, Nicholas Rajkovich, Tenured + Tenure-track faculty, Architecture