Category: IEQ

2023 Livable Building Awards Recognize Community Focused Residence Hall and Healthy Adaptive Reuse

2023 Livable Building Awards Recognize Community Focused Residence Hall and Healthy Adaptive Reuse

The 2023 Livable Buildings Award has been awarded to VMDO Architects for their Paul Jennings Residence Hall, a 500-bed student housing facility at James Madison University completed in 2019. This project is the first residential building to be recognized by this award program, held annually since 2007. The awards also recognized the Bay Area Offices for SERA Architects with an honorable mention. SERA designed a full-floor office in a historic building in downtown Oakland, Calif., with a focus on creating a flexible and healthy workspace.

More

CBE Unveils Renovated Controlled Environment Chamber, Expanding Future Research

CBE Unveils Renovated Controlled Environment Chamber, Expanding Future Research

CBE’s controlled environment chamber has been used for research leading to hundreds of journal papers, including keystone work related to human response, indoor environments and mechanical systems in buildings and automobile cabins. A major renovation was completed this fall, updating obsolete systems and failing equipment that was hindering important research operations. This milestone was celebrated in a ribbon cutting ceremony and happy hour before CBE’s fall Industry Advisory Board meeting. In this post we acknowledge the recent contributors, and discuss past work and future directions.

More

Funding for California Clean Energy Entrepreneurs: Applications Due December 3, 2023

Funding for California Clean Energy Entrepreneurs: Applications Due December 3, 2023

CBE is one of 30 research testbeds supporting the California Test Bed Initiative, a lab-based commercialization development program for innovators and entrepreneurs working to bring early to mid-stage clean energy concepts to market. CalTestBed will award vouchers worth up to $300,000 to test and validate candidate technologies at one of nearly 30 testbeds across the UC system and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Under this program, CBE has completed voucher-based research for two emerging cleantech companies.

More

Smart Thermostat Innovation Will Help People Breathe Easier During Wildfires

Smart Thermostat Innovation Will Help People Breathe Easier During Wildfires

Wildfires in the western United States have been increasing in frequency and magnitude in recent decades, resulting in poor air quality that constitutes a major environmental risk factor for human health and mortality. Researchers at CBE have created a novel software tool for smart thermostats to improve the air quality inside homes at times when outside air becomes unhealthy during wildfires.

More

New Study Throws Cold Water on Widely Accepted Relationship Between Temperature and Work Performance

New Study Throws Cold Water on Widely Accepted Relationship Between Temperature and Work Performance

The results of a new study challenge an industry standard which cited an optimal indoor temperature to improve work performance. The study followed the methods of previous research, but used additional data and rigorous statistical methods. The results found no evidence for a relationship between work performance and temperatures commonly found in offices, and none that should be adopted as an industry recommendation.

More

2021 Livable Building Award Winner is an Instrument for Environmental Learning

2021 Livable Building Award Winner is an Instrument for Environmental Learning

Discovery Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, has earned the 2021 Livable Building Award from UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. A program jury from CBE’s building industry consortium lauded how the “purposeful design of the building supports students and teachers by creating a diverse learning environment with seemingly endless ways to engage students.” The project is also one of the first certified zero-energy building schools nationwide.

More

Alternatives to Air Conditioning: Fans as a Path to Resilience

Alternatives to Air Conditioning: Fans as a Path to Resilience

Hurricanes, wildfires, and floods produce dramatic images of destruction, but heatwaves cause more deaths in the U.S. each year. Research and new tools help us understand how fans can provide resiliency during extreme heat events. Fans may use 10 to 100 times less energy than air conditioning, reducing the impact on power grids during these events.

More

New Comfort Classifications Acknowledge Human Variability and Encourage Occupant Control

New Comfort Classifications Acknowledge Human Variability and Encourage Occupant Control

Imagine an ice cream parlor that offers only one flavor of ice cream, one chosen by scientists based on what an ‘average’ person wants. While this idea seems absurd, a similar logic has been used in establishing standards for thermal comfort in buildings. A group of CBE staff, industry partners and others have developed a revision to thermal comfort standards that acknowledges the variability in human comfort preferences.

More

CBE Contributing to International Research Collaboration on Resilient Cooling for Buildings

CBE Contributing to International Research Collaboration on Resilient Cooling for Buildings

CBE researchers are part of a research program on “Resilient Cooling for Buildings,” supported by an international association of governments, industry and researchers. The main objective is to support the rapid adoption of resilient, low-energy and low-carbon cooling systems for buildings. This work will also serve to help cities and communities better contend with climate-based and demand-based power outages.

More

Nudging the Adaptive Thermal Comfort Model

Nudging the Adaptive Thermal Comfort Model

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.

More