Julia Nugent is an architect and planner with over 30 years of professional experience. Her practice focuses on design for educational facilities with an emphasis on how architecture can support educational mission, pedagogical and curricular innovation, and student development. Her areas of expertise include programming, campus master planning, sustainable design, and developing strategies for project implementation in public and private educational facilities.
Julia is currently the Project Director for the new Annie E. Fales Elementary School, a 70,000 sf K-3 grade school in Westborough, Massachusetts which is projected to achieve Net Positive Energy use when it opens in Fall of 2021. Julia led an early community engagement process that established the political, financial, and technical requirements to achieve this goal, and guided a team of experts through design and construction process to meet the ambitious energy reduction and energy production benchmarks. The building is predicted to produce 10% more energy than the school consumes, allowing a utility credit that will pay for energy at other district schools.
This past year, she has also designed an Net-Zero, passive house level single family house. This Rhode Island home is under construction for completion in Summer 2022.The differences and similarities of large and small scale Net Zero design have been fascinating and influenced one another in unexpected ways.
Julia received her BS and M Arch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a former faculty member at the Boston Architectural College and has presented regionally and nationally on a variety of educational and sustainability topics.