Building Science at UC Berkeley Building Science at the University of California Berkeley is dedicated to the energy efficiency and environmental quality of buildings. Its underlying premise is that energy-use patterns and environmental quality are related, and that this relationship contains great opportunities to improve the built environment. Building Science also has the objective of breaking down the compartmentalized decision-making that now characterizes building practice. Its research and teaching address the decisions made by architects, engineers, specifiers, facilities managers, and owners. Such decisions are important, because they affect:
The Building Science Group at Berkeley aims to influence practice and improve the environmental quality of buildings by educating future members of the building professions and by providing new technical information to the building professions and industry. page links:
Building Science research and teaching use a wide range of methods and theories, but most of our work is centered in the Building Science Laboratory, established in 1980. The Laboratory operates in partnership with the University of California Energy Institute (UCEI), an organization dedicated to energy research across the University of California's nine campuses. The Building Science Laboratory is used for both teaching and research. Its major fixed facilities include a controlled environment chamber, a boundary-layer wind tunnel, an artificial sky simulator, a full scale underfloor air distribution testing facility, and a heliodon. It also has an extensive set of mobile measuring equipment for doing research within operating buildings, and for micrometeorological investigations outdoors.
Research Topics in Building Science include environmental quality and its
effects on occupant comfort, health, and productivity, energy efficiency in buildings and their components,
methods and technology for design and operation of building, and climate-responsive urban and site planning.
Other related research:
In 1997 the Group established The Center for the Built Environment (CBE). This organization operates as a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC). CBE's research serves a diverse consortium of building industry leaders committed to improving the design, operation and performance of commercial and institutional buildings. The Group has also been transferring technology to building professions through the Pacific Gas and Electric Energy Center, a design information center operated by our local power utility. Publications by the Building Science Group and its students are primarily in technical and professional journals of the fields of building engineering and architecture. They are available from CEDR. Building Science at Berkeley benefits from its setting in a very large interdisciplinary architecture program, with varied and excellent students and faculty colleagues. It also benefits in that the Bay Area is a major center of Building Science research and practice. The faculty and students collaborate daily with scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Department of Energy laboratory located adjacent to the UCB campus. There are also numerous design offices and energy hardware/software firms in this area that work with our laboratory on problems encountered in applied practice. [../../headers_footers/new_footer/footer_final.htm] |
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The
Fred
Bauman models the airflow over San Francisco in the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel (left).