Dr Linda Toledo
Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow
Architecture
Personal statement
Personal statement
I am a Strathclyde Chancellor’s Fellow in Healthy Buildings and a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture. Trained as an architect at the University IUAV of Venice (2007), I gained professional experience in Italy and Belgium before pursuing a Master’s in Sustainability & Design at the University of East London (2012). In 2018, I was awarded a PhD in Sustainable Buildings from De Montfort University, with research focused on the risks of overheating in highly insulated English houses—examining the design process, comfort performance, and occupant behaviour.
From 2019 to 2021, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Eurac Research, contributing to projects on energy efficiency (existing buildings, and heritage). In 2021, I joined the University of Strathclyde as a Research Associate, where I conducted research in building performance evaluation (BPE), ventilation, and indoor air quality, with outputs informing the Scottish Government.
I am an international member of the Young Academy for Sustainability Research at the University of Freiburg. I have served as co-editor for special issues, I am a reviewer for peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and research forums. I actively contribute to the International Energy Agency’s EBC Annexes 79, 86 and 95.
My strategic research focus lies in addressing the risks of overheating and poor indoor air quality in low-energy housing (both new and renovated)—a field I have worked in for over a decade. Recently, I have been exploring the role of adaptive comfort and ventilation strategies in mitigating overheating. My research spans key themes in the sustainable built environment, including thermal comfort, low-energy design, human-centric design, and climate change adaptation, with the aim of influencing housing design in the UK, EU, and Global South.
I am currently accepting PhD students.
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Publications
- Towards a harmonized database of indoor air contaminant concentrations : methods and application to CO2
- Rojas Gabriel, Staffer Reto, Casquero-Modrego Núria, Loomans Marcel, Abadie Marc, Alhindawi Ibrahim, Babich Francesco, Bekö Gabriel, Coggins Marie, Cremers Bart, Damberger Bernhard, Freundorfer Timm, Garcia-Ortega Sonia, Hassan Hala, Jones Benjamin, Justo Alonso Maria, Lara-Ibeas Irene, McGill Grainne, McGrath James, Monge-Barrio Aurora, Molina Constanza, Moreno-Rangel Alejandro, Tappler Peter, Toledo Linda
- Building and Environment Vol 292, pp. 1-19 (2026)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2026.114297
- PANDORA : An open-access database of indoor pollutant emission rates for IAQ modeling
- Abadie Marc, Geffre Eol, Picard Charles Florian, Loomans Marcel, Babich Francesco, Monge-Barrio Aurora, Licina Dusan, McGill Gráinne, Toledo Linda, Coggins Ann Marie, Pourkiaei Mohsen, Casquero-Modrego Núria, Molina Constanza, Sadrizadeh Sasan, McGrath James, Rojas-Kopeinig Gabriel
- Journal of Building Engineering Vol 114 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2025.114216
- Impact of indoor environmental quality on health and wellbeing in a warming climate
- Al-Khatri Hanan, Alonso González Lezcano Roberto, Toledo Linda, Moreno-Rangel Alejandro
- Building Research and Information Vol 53, pp. 1-2 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2025.2460001
- Case study investigation of overheating in low-energy homes : insights from a post-occupancy evaluation in England
- Toledo Linda, Wright Andrew, Cropper Paul
- Building Research and Information Vol 53, pp. 139-164 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2024.2417274
- Health and well-being during heat waves in social housing : insights into a field study in the Alpine region
- Toledo Linda
- Comfort at the Extremes 2024: Investing in well-being in a challenging future (2024)
- Exploring strategies for resilience to overheating in low-energy buildings
- Toledo Linda, Lollini Roberto
- Comfort at the Extremes 2024: Investing in well-being in a challenging future , pp. 86 (2024)
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Professional Activities
- Reported practices on ventilative cooling and perceived overheating in low-energy homes
- Speaker
- 4/11/2025
- Invited Session: Avoiding the heat: different approaches to investigate overheating in buildings
- Chair
- 17/9/2025
- Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) (Publisher)
- Peer reviewer
- 2025
- Examining Culture and space transformation in Botswana’s endogenous towns– a decolonial option
- Examiner
- 26/11/2024
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- Visiting researcher
- 3/6/2024
- Building Research and Information (Journal)
- Guest editor
- 5/2024
Projects
- REsilient HouSIng for the Alpine region
- Toledo, Linda (Principal Investigator)
- The project REsilient HouSIng for the Alpine region (REHSIA) aims to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, mitigate the effects of climate change, and support the adaptation of buildings to rising temperatures. This goal will be achieved by combining general knowledge of building practices with recent ethnographic data from households in the Italian Alpine region.
REHSIA will review the literature on adaptive comfort, update existing empirical evidence, and integrate these findings with ethnographic insights. It will also analyse local energy regulations and engaging with the Klimahaus Institute (owner of the Italian Klimahaus building certification system). Building simulations will be used to predict thermal performance under various climate scenarios.
In terms of impact, REHSIA addresses the issue of overheating in low-energy buildings, improving both energy efficiency and indoor comfort. Aligned with regional strategies, the project contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainability. Its recommendations will empower local designers and residents, while also providing valuable case studies for other regions in Italy and similar climatic zones (Cfb).
This fellowship is financed by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen through the Initiatives to Promote the International Mobility of Researchers LG 14/2006 (Decree 14978/2024). - 01-Jan-2025 - 31-Jan-2025
- Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training: Energy-efficient Indoor Climate Control for Optimised Health
- McGill, Grainne (Principal Investigator) Tse, Dwight (Principal Investigator) Waites, William (Principal Investigator) Toledo, Linda (Principal Investigator) Moreno-Rangel, Alejandro (Principal Investigator) Sharpe, Tim (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator)
- This SCDT will provide three fully-funded PhD students with a world-class interdisciplinary research and training programme to bridge the net-zero design and construction skills gap whilst providing specialist skills in human-centric smart building design and digitisation for optimised health and resilience.
The increased risk of overheating, poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and inadequate ventilation in energy-efficient and/or net-zero buildings is now well evidenced, including the increasing gap between design expectations and energy performance, which is highly influenced by human behaviour. This CDT will train future innovators and leaders that can drive the transition to a healthy and energy-efficient built environment. The training will be led by experts in net-zero design, indoor air quality, building resilience, human behaviour and data analytics. Each project will be co-supervised by staff from different disciplines and all projects will involve industry partners and/or clinical advisors, to ensure that the research explored is based on an area of industry/clinical need.
The centre will provide highly-skilled future experts and leaders to tackle the challenges of delivering net-zero buildings that are human-oriented and optimise health. The CDT will deliver emerging multidisciplinary research endeavours by working across the departments of Architecture, Psychology and CIS, to decarbonise the built environment while providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment.
SCDT students will become part of a growing PGR cohort, benefiting from peer-to-peer learning and an inclusive research culture. Opportunities will be provided to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders (such as clinicians, industry specialists and the public), through internships/placements, personal development and specialist training, networking and interdisciplinary collaborations.
Successful candidates will be trained in writing manuscripts for publication in scientific journals, and strongly supported and encouraged to apply to external funding (such as travel grants), where appropriate. As part of the PhD programme, the candidate will be registered on the PGCert in Researcher Development. This is a 60-credit qualification covering personal effectiveness, governance, organisation, engagement, impact, and intellectual abilities, running in tandem with the PhD programme.
Candidates are expected to proactively take ownership of their project and creatively contribute to shaping it. We are seeking future leaders to develop knowledge and expertise required to address future challenges in the following three areas:
1. Linking indoor pollutant exposure and climate conditions with physical and psychological health outcomes,
2. Technological solutions for energy-efficient indoor climate control,
3. Understanding and analysis of psychological and behavioural factors that affect exposure indoors. - 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2026
- ADAPTIVE HOUSING: Solutions for Adaptive and Resilient Low-Energy Housing under Climate Change Scenarios
- Toledo, Linda (Principal Investigator)
- Investigation the role of adaptive behaviour in the process of securing comfort in low-energy homes, in the context of a global increase in temperatures. For this project, I am embracing uncertainty and a non-deterministic approach to research to extend the boundaries of deterministic building simulations, by first developing a knowledge map that integrates literature on adaptive occupant behaviour and interaction between occupants and building systems with emerging knowledge on climate change's impact on buildings.
This Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship is financed by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen through the Seal of Excellence funding scheme. - 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2024
- Research to identify if changes to guidance in standard 3.14 ventilation in 2015 have been effective in improving ventilation and indoor air quality
- Howieson, Stirling (Co-investigator) Sharpe, Tim (Principal Investigator) McGill, Grainne (Co-investigator) Toledo, Linda (Co-investigator) Tuohy, Paul Gerard (Principal Investigator)
- The 2015 regulations required all new dwellings to have CO2 monitors installed to alert the occupants to poor indoor air quality that would encourage them to open windows and provide purge ventilation.
- 01-Jan-2021 - 01-Jan-2023
- Measure, inform, nudge: an integrated, human-centric air quality measurement and visualisation system
- Sharpe, Tim (Principal Investigator) McGill, Grainne (Co-investigator) Toledo, Linda (Researcher)
- SBRI Phase 2 Project - follow on from RKES 201683
- 01-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2022
- Research to identify if changes to guidance in Standard 3.14 Ventilation in 2015 have been effective in improving ventilation and indoor air quality
- Sharpe, Tim (Principal Investigator) Howieson, Stirling (Co-investigator) McElroy, Lori (Co-investigator) McGill, Grainne (Co-investigator) Tuohy, Paul Gerard (Co-investigator) Toledo, Linda (Researcher)
- Scottish Governement Tender response (consultancyu services)
- 18-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2025
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Contact
Dr
Linda
Toledo
Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow
Architecture
Email: linda.toledo@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted