Dive Brief:

• If you want to know how a building's insulation, air-conditioning, window shading or range of other features will behave in a climate of your choosing, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has four little buildings that can help answer those questions, including one built on a rotating turntable.
• The new FLEXLAB on the Lawrence Berkeley campus above San Francisco Bay is the Facility for Low Energy Experiments, and it offers structures that can be outfitted and re-outfitted to test technologies and designs for the office of the future and the people who will work in them.
• The rotating building can help designers simulate sun exposures at various latitudes and in various seasons; coverings and window types and other features can be swapped in and out, and an array of sensors keep track of what is happening in each configuration.

Dive Insight:

The lab has equipment to simulate the heat generated by people sitting inside, and inside temperatures can be varied widely to simulate indoor-outdoor differences even in the moderate climes of the bay area.