MIT has a major international effort underway in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Institute of technology and the University of Tokyo dealing with global sustainability. In the buildings area there are research projects underway on tools for sustainable design and indoor air quality. The design tools are intended as simple intuitive graphical tools that designers and city planners can use in the initial phases of design. The tools will present the implications of energy, renewable materials, and air quality, among others, for different projected designs. Graduate students are presently developing graphical representations of the sustainability factors and algorithms for rapid real time calculation of sustainability indices. In a parallel effort researchers and students from the three universities are coordinating a research effort to relate the materials used in a building interior with the level of pollutants and indoor air quality.