Gail Brager and Tom Parkinson April 15, 2020
Using an extensive trove of thermal comfort research data, CBE’s research team recently published a set of ‘nudges’ to the existing adaptive comfort standards to improve comfort in commercial buildings while potentially reducing energy use. This work updates the landmark study from 1998 by Gail Brager and Richard de Dear on the Adaptive Comfort Model (ACM), which demonstrated that people in naturally ventilated buildings were more comfortable with seasonal temperature variation compared to people in air-conditioned buildings.
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David Lehrer April 15, 2020
Millions of people are working at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19, creating stress and impacting our well-being and productivity. Science shows that time spent in nature may improve our health and emotions, however, when we are not able to be in nature physically, we may derive benefits simply by access to windows with views. A study recently published by CBE found that a view from a window has positive impacts on emotion, cognitive performance and thermal comfort.
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David Lehrer November 15, 2019
Two buildings that demonstrate excellence in architectural design and sustainability, and are well liked by building users, have been recognized with Livable Buildings Awards by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. Bluestone Elementary School of Harrisonburg, Virginia, by a design team led by VMDO Architects, received the top award. The jury also conferred an honorable mention to HGA’s office relocation in San Francisco. The award results were announced at CBE’s industry advisory board meeting last October.
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David Lehrer August 12, 2019
The diversity of CBE’s industry consortium is unique and beneficial to our work, as these perspectives inform the center’s directions and research portfolio. This fall CBE welcomes new leadership who will help to guide the research team and represent the interests of CBE industry consortium members. In this post we talk with the new Partner Chair Andy Reilman and our new Partner Vice-Chair Isabelle Lavedrine.
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Valerie Green August 12, 2019
Biophilia — humans’ innate love of nature — is an idea that has inspired wide-ranging research on the benefits of human connection with nature. So how do we translate this wealth of research knowledge into making buildings that capture the benefits of nature? CBE and SERA Architects are jointly developing a biophilia option for CBE’s occupant survey to evaluate the impact of biophilic features in existing workspaces.
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Jovan Pantelic and Megan Dawe July 10, 2019
During the 2018 fires, CBE used previously-installed sensors in two University buildings to understand and evaluate building resilience to urban scale air pollution, quantifying particle penetration to the indoors from outdoors. The low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) PM2.5 sensors were accompanied by a survey of the building occupants, with questions focused on changes in their behavior, perceived air quality, self-reported productivity and health symptoms.
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David Lehrer May 15, 2019
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of a seminal paper from Rocky Mountain Institute, “Greening the Building and the Bottom Line,” making the case that green buildings’ unique features may improve employee productivity. Since then interest in this topic has remained strong, and several studies by CBE and others have contributed to our collective understanding of workplace productivity; in this post we describe our related work with a focus on key variables.
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David Lehrer April 17, 2019
This spring CBE’s research team received funding to support two new projects that will create new ways to gather, analyze and monetize data from commercial buildings, yielding energy cost savings and more comfort for building users.
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David Lehrer April 16, 2019
CBE has released an interactive web-based tool for the early phases of design of high thermal mass radiant systems, that may be used to predict steady-state conditions for both heating and cooling modes, greatly facilitating a standard design practice. However it can also predict dynamic (transient) performance for cooling, taking into account the effects of changing loads and the effects of thermal mass of the building structure.
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David Lehrer February 14, 2019
CBE has produced a short video to showcase how our research team works with a diverse community of industry leaders to advance new technologies and promising design and operation strategies.
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