Jack Rusk is a writer, designer, and researcher from Concord, California (Bay Miwok Chupcan). Their work spans across the disciplines of architectural design, industrial ecology, data science, and critical inquiry. Jack is currently CEO and co-founder of C.Scale. Previously, they were the Director of Climate Strategy at EHDD Architecture in San Francisco, CA.
C.Scale: Carbon Clarity from Concept to Construction. Pitch. BuiltWorlds, 2025.
Less Time Reporting, More Time Decarbonizing. Speaker, with DLR Group. AIA National COTE/TAP Symposium, 2025.
Data-Driven Design-Integrated Decarbonization. Speaker. KPF Tech Week, 2025.
Make Every Decision Count for Carbon Reduction. Panelist. Living Future Conference, 2025.
Data-Driven Decarbonization: Next Generation Tools to Spur Climate Action on Every Project. Speaker. AIA Los Angeles TechRize Conference, 2025.
Recent Advancements in Carbon Accounting for Buildings. Panelist. AIA SF ClimateTech Conference, 2025.
Embodied Carbon: Practice, Policy, and Industry. Panelist. Energy Transition Coordinating Council Summit, 2024.
Case Studies in Equitable Decarbonization. Lecture. UC Berkeley Sustainability Colloquium, 2024.
Decarbonization by Design: Connecting Building with Industrial Decarbonization. Co-Host, panelist. New York Climate Week, 2024.
Is Zero Possible? Panelist. Net Zero Conference, 2024.
Evolution of Building Performance Metrics. Panelist. IBPSA-USA, 2024.
AI-Powered Carbon Insights for Architectural Design. Panelist. AIA24, 2024.
Design, Data, Decarbonization. Expert speaker. Climatebase Fellowship Cohort 5. Climatebase, 2024.
Grid-Interactive Buildings and the New Net Zero. Speaker. The Architect's Roadmap to Net Zero, 2024.
Design Workflows for Efficiency-First Decarbonization. Speaker. The Architect's Roadmap to Net Zero, 2024.
Climate Strategy: New Domains of Practice. Lecturer. Embodied Carbon in Buildings, with professor Stephanie Carlisle. University of Pennsylvania, 2024.
New Domains of Design Practice. Lecturer. Design Colloquium, with professor Robert Peña. University of Washington, 2024.
Climate Strategy as a Design Discipline. Lecturer. Speaker Series. Diablo Valley College, 2024.
Designing for the Climate Crisis. Panelist. Cameron MacAllister Design Colloquium, 2023.
Embodied Carbon Budgets for Buildings. Speaker. COTE NOLA Rising: Symposium for Climate and Equity, 2023.
Using Life-Cycle Assessment and Associated Tools to Reduce Embodied and Operational Carbon Impacts. Speaker. UC Berkeley CBE and PG&E, 2023.
Climate Research in Design Practice. Moderator, speaker. AIA National Conference, 2023.
Carbon Crash Course Charrette. Speaker, facilitator. AIA National Conference, 2023.
It's EPIC to CARE. Speaker. Architizer x Material Bank Design Your Impact Series, 2023.
Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings: Untangling Ourselves From the ‘Net’ in Net Zero. Speaker. The Architect's Roadmap to Net Zero, 2023.
Making Zero Possible: Efficiency-First Decarbonization. Speaker. The Architect's Roadmap to Net Zero, 2023.
Decision support tools for planning low-carbon buildings. Speaker. ASCE Architectural Engineering Conference, 2023.
Beyond energy: embodied carbon in practice and policy. Panelist. CalBEM, 2022.
First steps on a low-carbon pathway. Presenter. AIA CA, 2022. [video]
No half measures: how a whole carbon perspective informs facade design. Panelist. Facades+, 2022.
Embodied carbon modeling workshop. Presenter. AIA VA ArchEx East, 2022.
The role of geospatial data in building decarbonization. AEC keynote. ESRI IMGIS, 2022. [video]
Data-driven decarbonization. Panelist. Tech+, 2022.
A deeper dive on embodied carbon. Panelist. Build Reuse Conference, 2022.
Carbon accounting: terminology and metrics. Panelist. AIA California, 2022.[video]
Role of Smart Buildings in Reducing Carbon Emissions. Panelist. Smart Buildings Exchange, 2022.
Understanding the new carbon estimating tools for early phase design. Panelist. Sustainable Minds, 2022.
Building design cultures for climate action: technology, workflows, teams. Panelist. AIA National Conference, 2022.
Places to thrive: Architecture, climate change, and the great indoors. Lecturer. The Dalton School, 2022.
Low-carbon design for the rest of us: the pedagogical role of data models and design tools. Lecturer. ENV 894, Green Building with Professor Peter Yost. Yale School of the Environment, 2020.
LCA-informed design practices to minimize whole lifecycle carbon. Lecturer. Advancing High Performance Design, 2020. Conference canceled due to Covid-19
The real promise (and potential peril) of mass timber at scale. Lecturer. WSP Built Ecology lunchtime lecture series, 2019.
Our best organizer! Avery Review (2024). With ABI Collective. New York, NY
I, Like Many Things. Actar (2023). With Rachael Tsai, Diana Smiljkovic, and Gustav Nielsen. New Haven, CT.
Innovation in a time of crisis: EHDD's Early Phase Integrated Carbon Assessment. ArcCA Digest (2023). San Francisco, CA
Democratizing Decarbonization. EHDD blog (2022). San Francisco, CA.
Across Currents. Urban Omnibus (2022). New York, NY.
There is a light that never goes out: Changing patterns of occupation at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. AA Files 78 (2022). London, UK.
Served Space. CLOG:FEEDS (2021). Brooklyn, NY.
To reduce disaster risk, a multi-hazard approach is necessary. Nepali Times (2021). Kathmandu, Nepal.
*Rusk, J., Maharjan, A., Tiwari, P., Chen, T. H. K., Shneiderman, S., Turin, M., & Seto, K. C. Multi-hazard susceptibility and exposure assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya. Science of the Total Environment (2022).
There's No Place Like. Contributor, editor. Paprika! (2021) With Rachael Tsai, Diana Smiljkovic, and Gustav Neilsen.
*Holl, K.D., Lesage, J.C., Adams, T., Rusk, J., Schreiber, R.D. and Tang, M. Vegetative spread is key to applied nucleation success in non-native dominated grasslands. Restoration Ecology (2021).
In Spite of the New Austerity. Paprika! (2020) State of the Carpet Bulletin.
What’s at stake in Mistaken Identity? Issue introduction, editorial content, interview with Sogorea Te Land Trust. Paprika! (2020). Issue editor with Steven Rodriguez. New Haven, CT.
Schools for Resilience: Cristóbal Colón School Case Study, Chapter 7 and sections 3.1, 9.1-3 100 Resilient Cities (2019). New York City, NY.
When disaster looms, take a hard look at soft mitigation. Yale Environment Review (2019). New Haven, CT.
Tale of two Parises: Gilets Jaunes and new directions in climate action. Commune Magazine (2019). Brooklyn, NY.
Climate change’s direct contribution to worsening mental health. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (2019). New Haven, CT.
Economic and environmental synergies between CFI and CLT. Research Poster. International Mass Timber Conference (2019). Portland, OR.
* Peer-reviewed publication
Master of Architecture
Yale School of Architecture
2019-2022
Master of Environmental Management
Specialization in Industrial Ecology
Yale School of the Environment
2018-2022
Plant Sciences, B.S.
University of California, Santa Cruz
summa cum laude
C.Scale; San Francisco, CA
Democratizing access to tools and data to enable a decarbonized built environment. Learn more at cscale.io.
EHDD; San Francisco, CA
EHDD; San Francisco, CA
I work on a variety of efforts related to EHDD's Climate Positive design and advocacy commitment. Much of this work centers on the development of EPIC, an open access design tool for comparing carbon reduction strategies at the earliest phase of a project.
Plan B Architecture + Urbanism; New Haven, CT
Project management; structural design; fabrication
WSP Built Ecology; New York, NY
Emission and financial modeling of the implications for building owners of NYC's LL97; LEED documentation; design
David Hertz, FAIA; Los Angeles, CA
Ecological assessment and design-build
Jack Rusk Design; Los Angeles and Oakland, CA
Design and fabrication of custom furniture, millwork and fixtures for residential and commercial clients.
Pacific Mews, with Common Bond
@ SPUR
HMWRK
@ YSoA North Gallery
Plan B A+U
@ Venice Architecture Biennale
HMWRK
@ YSoA North Gallery
Yale University, New Haven, CT
As part of a NASA-funded study, I used machine learning and remote sensing to build a series of landscape hazard models characterizing the relative likelihood of the hazard across the region. Working with regional experts and anthropologists, the results of these models were contextualized and interpreted through the human and ecological dimensions of urbanization.Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
My proposal, “A Necessary Reckoning: Architectures of Reciprocity and Reparation,” sought to connect abstract accounting for future harm to immediate acts of reparation.Yale School of the Environment, New Haven, CT
Graduate teaching fellow for Green Building with Melissa Kops and Peter Yost.Yale School of the Environment, New Haven, CT
Graduate teaching fellow for Yale School of the Environment's Urban Ecology MODS with Colleen Murphy-Dunning, Gaboury Benoit, and Amity Doolittle.Yale School of the Environment, New Haven, CT
Graduate teaching fellow for Life Cycle Assessment with Yuan Yao.Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, CT
Teaching assistant to Pier Vittorio Aureli for his seminars Architecture and Abstraction (2020) and The Origins of Capitalist Space (2022).Forma’s new Embodied Carbon Analysis: Understand the carbon impact of your early design decisions. Ameera Azeez, 2024.
Autodesk Forma Video Series: Embodied Carbon. Daniel Stine, 2024.
10 Ideas for Nurturing Thriving Connections Inside and Outside Your Firm. Architect Magazine, 2023
New Web-Based Tool Assists Architects in the Early Phases of Planning Climate Positive Buildings. Archdaily, 2022.
Free tool estimates embodied and operational carbon. Building Green, 2022
Hazards of the Himalayas Clash with Today’s Urbanization Patterns. Yale Science Magazine, 2022
Compound hazards pose increased risk to highly populated regions in the Himalayas. ScienceDaily, 2021
Yale leads effort to explore multi-hazard climate risks in the Himalayas. Yale Daily News, 2021.
Participant, White House Roundtable on Embodied Carbon. Executive Office of the President, 2024.
Reviewer, Advancing the LCA Data Ecosystem. Carbon Leadership Forum, 2023.
Reviewer, Driving Action on Embodied Carbon in Buildings. RMI/USGBC, 2023.
Jury Member, 2024 AIA COTE Top Ten Awards. AIA, 2023 - 2024.
Member, Energy+Carbon Technical Advisory Group. International Living Future Institute. 2022 -
Peer reviewer, Natural Hazards. 2022 -
Member, SFTool Advisory Peer Review Panel. US GSA. 2023.