Submitted by Peter Lumb on Mon, 2016-02-22 14:48
In this month’s lowdown, we bring you an update from one of the Living Lab-supported projects and fill you in on some exciting student opportunities!
Back to school for sustainable building project
Ramaraj Sundraraj, a fourth year Engineering student, is investigating the temperature distribution and natural ventilation system within the new University of Cambridge Primary School (pictured above). The school is architecturally unique due to its circular-shaped design and courtyard, ‘doorless’ and large glass-walled classrooms and its use of a natural ventilation. This project aims to look at whether or not there is a performance gap between how the designers estimated the building would perform and how it performs in reality.
This project aims to investigate whether a building is performing as it should straight away or whether, with a few simple adjustments, it can be made to perform as well as intended. It is hoped that this project will also aid a better understanding of the role of ‘doorless’ designs towards better ventilation, glass walls for solar heat gains, and the effect of ventilation upon temperature distributions. It also explores the tradeoffs made by implementing certain unique design features such as fully naturally ventilated spaces.
New opportunity for student consultants
Want consulting experience? Keen to apply your skills to real problems? Fancy helping to reduce the University’s environmental impact? If you answer yes to any of those questions then this opportunity is for you!
The Living Laboratory, working with the Office of Intercollegiate Services, is looking for a student to act as a consultant on one of several interesting projects. We want you to help us examine some specific energy and environmental issues within the University and help us come up with solutions.
Email living.laboratory@admin.cam.ac.uk by Thursday 25 Feb to express your interest.