The Living Lab
In the world of building systems research and testing, the analysis media range from pure computer simulation to the study of occupied buildings. "In a general sense, simulation is flexible and powerful. You can repeat operations quickly, and test in any climate with many variables," says Stephen Selkowitz, head of LBNL's building technology department. "But simulation is limited in that it rarely captures behavioral factors and many of the details important in the real world," he adds. At the other end of the scale, monitoring a functioning building can be expensive and it's often impractical to change systems to accommodate research. "The test bed is the best of both worlds," he says. "The important thing is that you're evaluating something under pretty realistic conditions. It's kind of the sweet spot—a lot of realism, but with flexibility."
Human behavior is one of the biggest wild-cards in accessing building performance. Like all of these living labs, the LBNL facility will include research on the interplay between human behavior and new building technology. For example, in an LBNL study of electrochromic glass (glazing that can block light by becoming more opaque), the occupants were given control over the technology. In some cases, the performance got worse compared to automated control, Selkowitz relates. While users might not operate the blinds optimally, when asked for their reaction to having some control, their satisfaction went up.
Besides being a research base for Berkeley University students, the lab also hosts hands-on demonstrations for design professionals who come to see particular systems in operation. "A lot of architects and engineers come to the facility who have never seen components like an external shading system function," Selkowitz says. "Seeing how a system adjusts automatically to sun positions and how the overrides work is a very valuable experience," he adds.
There is strong interest from the green building industry in the new test beds, according to Selkowitz. One role of the new facility will be to validate the simulation tools used by industry to test products. For a component that's been designed using simulation software, using a test bed can facilitate evaluating the product in a real-world setting and help to fine-tune the accuracy of the simulation tools themselves.
Research at the Community Scale
Perhaps the most ambitious scheme now in the works is Texas A&M's north Dallas urban living laboratory project. Like many things in Dallas, it's big—it's also entrepreneurial and cultivates partnerships with industry. The 1.1 million-square-foot development will include residential, community-scale retail, recreation, and commercial areas. The concept behind the scheme is to build an entire community of some 2,500 residents that will serve as a large-scale laboratory for research and development for green products and strategies. The buildings will be monitored for energy and water consumption, and the occupants will participate by having their energy and water use tracked for research purposes. "We expect this to be used by a number of universities as a research and teaching platform," says Dr. Alan Jones, associate director of the project for Texas A&M's Agrilife, the state agency that is coordinating the effort. The project currently has some twenty partners from industry. Jones relates that the development will be open to research proposals from other universities in Texas and beyond.
Phase one of the master plan, developed by architects at HOK, is slated to be completed next year. This initial stage will include 300 apartments and, at the heart of the project, an educational interpretive center. "The center will showcase the products and the sustainable systems used in the development," Jones says. It will also house a data center where all the feedback from the monitoring equipment will be processed. The full project is expected to take five or six years to complete and is planned to cover 240 acres and include food production areas.
From the community scale of the A&M project to the previous projects' focus at the building and room scale, the importance of the new wave of living laboratories is that they are at the fulcrum of green education, research, and product development. They represent the next important step in refining products, improving the accuracy of simulation and building management software, and generally taking our understanding of complex building environments to a higher level. And for the next generation of green advocates, they will help teach the nuts and bolts of how buildings can be built in an environmentally responsible way.
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