Buildings do not always perform as expected, says Stephen E. Selkowitz, senior adviser for building science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Weak performance can be caused by a lack of building systems integration during design, construction and operation, he adds.
Selkowitz hopes the Berkeley lab's $15.7-million Facility for Low-Energy Experiments in Buildings will improve the situation. FLEXLAB is the world's first outside-user research "sandbox" for full-scale tests on office building systems.