Projects
Piloting the future
Campus as a Living Lab projects use UBC infrastructure, assets and resources to support innovative and applied research projects that improve our communities, region and world. They pilot new ideas, advance faculty research and interdisciplinary collaborations, have an operational benefit for the university, and create opportunities for student learning and knowledge exchange.
These projects link research to action. They include large-scale innovative capital projects with strong research programs, academic-industry partnerships advancing R&D for new technologies, specialized applied research programs within a variety of disciplines, real-world scale research infrastructure supporting a broad range of academic research and operational benefits, and innovative student learning opportunities and programs.
Find out more about these projects, and what we are learning from them.
Project Library
UBC’s Brock Commons Tallwood House is one of a growing number of mass-timber buildings around the world. Our Tallwood House takes advantage of new engineered wood products and construction techniques to showcase more sustainable building practices.
How can we estimate embodied carbon in buildings to achieve GHG emissions reduction targets? This project identifies challenges and solutions for enabling more effective use of life cycle assessment (LCA) and benchmarking to drive embodied emission cutbacks.
The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) serves as both a hub for sustainability work on campus, as well as a sustainable building research subject. An internationally recognized interdisciplinary centre, CIRS embodies UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab approach to testing new ideas and sharing knowledge about sustainable building technologies and performance.
The UBC E-Kitchen will support efforts towards building a circular economy and reducing waste by repairing electronic equipment and distributing refurbished devices to those in need both on and off campus.
The Bioenergy Research Demonstration Facility produces renewable energy for UBC’s campus using wood waste biomass. This helps reduce UBC’s GHG emissions and supports research projects on innovative clean energy systems.