Rate My Professor Masa Noguchi

Dr. Masa Noguchi is an Associate Professor in Environmental Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering (BEng), a Master of Architecture (MArch), and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Architecture from McGill University. Before joining the University of Melbourne in November 2013, he held the position of Reader at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, affiliated with the University of Glasgow, where he established a ZEMCH pathway within the Master of Architectural Studies program. Noguchi is a Chartered Engineer, Environmentalist, and Technological Product Designer registered with the Engineering Council, Society for the Environment, and Institution of Engineering Designers in the UK. He is also a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and a Certified Passive House Designer with the Passive House Institute in Germany.

His research specializes in ZEMCH engineering design, which stands for Zero Energy Mass Custom Homes, and the development of socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable housing communities in developed and developing countries. As the founding coordinator of the ZEMCH Network, encompassing over 730 partners from nearly 45 countries, he has driven industry-academia knowledge transfer activities worldwide. Noguchi pioneered a mass custom design system for sustainable housing and created a digitalized interactive mass custom design communication tool, demonstrated in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon's Canadian house in 2005. In 2006, he designed Canada's first net zero energy modular industrialized home, the ÉcoTerra house, which was constructed and commercialized in 2007 through Canada's EQuilibrium sustainable housing competition. Key publications include the edited book ZEMCH: Toward the Delivery of Zero Energy Mass Custom Homes (Springer, 2016), as well as papers such as "A Design System Approach to Mass Customizing Industrialized Homes in Japan" (2002) and "The effect of the quality-oriented production approach on the delivery of prefabricated homes in Japan" (2003). He serves on the editorial boards of more than 15 international journals and frequently presents keynote lectures on ZEMCH research and development at national and international conferences.