Building 2050 - Research program

The Cardinal brewery bottled its last beer in 2011 in Fribourg. In order to revitalize this postindustrial urban area, the Canton and the city of Fribourg decided to transform the site into an innovation quarter (a technology and innovation park), called blueFACTORY. Many technological platforms will be developed, including the smart living lab, a joint project between EPFL, EIA-FR and UNIFR. The smart living lab project is born. The main goal of this project is to create a center of national and international reach specialized in the built environment of the future. To carry out this vision, five types of activities are envisaged: 1) Basic and applied research 2) Development and transfer of concepts and technologies 3) Demonstrators and pilot facilities 4) Post-graduate and continuing education 5) Networking The vision of the smart living lab project is to create, in the heart of the blueFACTORY, a living and working space ahead of its time – i.e., the building itself - housing an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional center of excellence in the field of innovative concepts and technologies linked to the built environment – i.e., the contents of the building. The building will, therefore, have to be in the forefront of the current practices, and will be an experimental support center for the future research teams it will house. The exceptional nature of the smart living lab project justifies the setting up of a preliminary research program, whose first objective is to define the scientific terms of reference of the performance requirements and how to integrate them to the construction project. The Building 2050 program consists of three main objectives, which correspond to three successive stages. Defining the scientific concept The main objective is the definition of a scientific framework that anticipates the performance level and the possible technical approaches to construct a building responding to the outlook 2050 challenges. Translating the concept into an operational program These requirements will then have to match the operational program for the conception and construction of the smart living lab, thus allowing the transition between applied sciences and operational program. In order to achieve this, an experimental phase is envisaged. It will allow the program to make the technical, economic and legal aspects reliable.   Enhancing the value of the research program All the work performed, will be enhanced all throughout the program by scientific and professional publications.