Inside CIRS at University of British Columbia -- "North America's Greenest Building"

Lloyd Alter
Design / Green Architecture
November 23, 2011

CIRS: The Centre for Interactive Research and Technology

credit: UBC

Sometimes, buildings are constructed to enclose laboratories; the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada is a laboratory, "a platform to test and showcase the technical performance and usability characteristics of the building’s technologies and systems, and to generate new knowledge about how to construct and maintain sustainable buildings," according to the website.

The $37 million project is also, says the university, the greenest building in North America.