The smart living lab moves to the blueFACTORY site

© 2015 EPFL

© 2015 EPFL

As of December 2015, the collaborators of the smart living lab, the center for research and development for the built environment of the future, will move to the Blue Hall, on the former Cardinal site in Fribourg. An Open House event organized by blueFACTORY will take place on Saturday, December 12, 2015. Everybody is welcome to visit.

The Blue Hall of the blueFACTORY site, innovation square in Fribourg, is now hosting the collaborators of the smart living lab, a center for research and development for the built environment of the future. The teams of the smart living lab (comprised of workers and researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg (HEIA-FR) and the University of Fribourg (UNIFR)) will temporarily work in the Blue Hall of the blueFACTORY in Fribourg, while awaiting the completion of the final smart living lab building also on the blueFACTORY site in Fribourg.

In the future, the smart living lab will have its own building, which will house its research and technology transfer activities in the field of sustainable architecture. Ahead of its time, this building should satisfy environmental goals set for the symbolic date of 2050. Its construction should be achieved by 2020.


The blueFACTORY site on the grounds of the former Cardinal brewery

On Saturday, December 12, blueFACTORY will organize an Open House event, where the public will discover the Blue Hall.

The reassignment of the hall is the first step of the overall transformation of the grounds of the former Cardinal brewery.

In the course of 2016, once the move is complete, the Blue Hall will host 200 workplaces and several labs. Smart living lab researchers will have 50 workplaces at their disposal as well as a construction and experiment workshop, which will enable the realization of prototypes, building components (facades, roofs, structure) and even entire buildings. For the time being, it houses timber boxes painted in bright colors and an interior garden that consists of big trees that the public will discover on Saturday, December 15.

The smart living lab will be present among other tenants of the Blue Hall and will display several posters on research projects. Moreover, an exhibition on the Solar Decathlon project – an international competition on building a habitat powered only by solar energy – will be presented to the public on this occasion.

Further information about the Open House event on Saturday, December 12, 2015 on http://www.bluefactory.ch