Bridging knowledge without borders
Bridging knowledge without borders: MIT D-Lab Students Meet Bariloche’s Future Builders
During the week of June 9, 2025, along with our partner FOVISEE Foundation we organized and coordinated an enriching exchange between students from MIT D-Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and students of Nehuen Peuman, a Technical Community College in Bariloche, with the participation of Nicolás Maggio, CEO of Weatherizers Without Borders.
During the semester Nicolás Maggio, our CEO, trained and mentored a group of MIT students in Building Science and Weatherization. After the semester we invited the group, all with diverse backgrounds, to travel from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Patagonia to share their learnings on Building Science and Weatherization in lower income housing.
They presented the interactive house model they built with the same materials commonly used in Bariloche’s houses, favoring educational tools with a practical focus as the best approach to Building Science. The model allows to learn and interact with home’s performance regarding energies, moisture, indoor air quality, etc. After learning how homes perform, we explored concrete solutions to improve human comfort and health conditions while addressing energy poverty.
It is essential that future construction professionals incorporate the perspective of Building Science and weatherization in order to transform their communities with sustainable solutions.
During this shared experience, students from both countries worked jointly, learning from one another and building meaningful connections. At WWB, we generate these kinds of initiatives because they demonstrate the value of educational exchange and international cooperation for driving real transformations in territories and in how we approach housing—in academic, construction, and social policy spheres alike.
We thank the MIT D-Lab, FOVISEE Foundation, Nehuen Peuman and the Gente Nueva Foundation for collaborating with our foundation to make this valuable meeting possible.
