Facilities

In addition to the common departmental facilities and resources, the Architectural Engineering program has two unique laboratories. 

The Larson Building Systems Laboratory is a unique facility in the HVAC industry. It is used for educational and research purposes and is designed for dynamic testing of complete and full-scale commercial HVAC and building systems. The facility consists of a full-size commercial HVAC system, four representative commercial building zones, a system for producing repeatable and controllable loads on the HVAC system and sophisticated data acquisition and control systems.

Activities at the laboratory include evaluation and testing of control algorithms and hardware for HVAC components and systems, interactions between multiple control functions of HVAC systems, the dynamic interactions between building thermal response and HVAC system controls, ventilation control for indoor air quality and HVAC system diagnostics.

The Lighting Laboratory provides a facility to test and evaluate architectural lighting systems as well as daylighting and lighting control systems. The lab has a dynamic ceiling such that the height can be adjusted, allowing for a wide range of academic and research exploration. The lab has full-wall south facing windows plus there are blackout curtains installed to eliminate external light when it is undesirable for research projects.

The Lighting Lab also houses a goniophotometer, used to measure the intensity of light leaving a luminaire at various vertical and horizontal angles. This allows the photometric light distribution of the luminaire to be derived, and quantities such as total lumen output, luminaire luminance, zonal lumen summary and other information can be computed.