Building as experiment
by Jeff Fay, Cooperative Extension Service
The Cold Climate Building and Infrastructure Research and Testing Facility was designed by members of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center.
Research Testing Facility Project Director Mike Musick and Rich
Seifert tour the building’s "green" roof. The clerestory windows
provide natural light to the north-facing laboratory below.
Cold Climate Housing Research Center President and CEO Jack Hébert is justifiably proud of his new office. The new CCHRC Cold Climate Building and Infrastructure Research and Testing Facility has taken shape over the last year and a half just to the east of the Thompson Drive entrance to the UAF Fairbanks campus.
CCHRC secured more than $5.2 million to construct the 15,000-square-foot building that houses offices, two laboratories for testing building materials and techniques, classrooms, a library, meeting rooms and demonstration space.
While the facility has laboratories for conducting experiments, the building itself is a showcase of, and a test bed for, innovative building technology for northern climates.
Starting from below ground and rising all the way to the roof, the CCHRC building is loaded with earth-friendly shelter technology.
- The building was designed to the standards of LEED--, a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-