Two projects featuring SALA team members are recipients of UBC Campus as a Living Lab funding through the 2022 CLL Fund Competition. The competition awards seed funding to innovative projects at UBC Vancouver that test new ideas to support climate action, resilient systems, sustainable places and communities, and health and wellbeing.
Associate Professor Blair Satterfield and Workshop + Digital Fabrication Supervisor Graham Entwistle, along with Carole Jolly of UBC Campus + Community Planning, are collaborating on an outdoor learning pavilion. A gift from the graduating class of 2020, the pavilion will integrate technologies developed by HiLo Lab and the Building Decision Research Group, including Zippered Wood. The pavilion responds to the challenges faced by the class of 2020 as they completed their degrees: pandemic-induced physical distancing, a reckoning on issues of discrimination and inclusion, and an unprecedented heat dome.
A multi-disciplinary team led by Associate Professor Joe Dahmen and including MArch students Lorena Polovina and Isobel McLean are developing MycoToilet, a composting toilet that uses mushroom (mycelium) biocomposites with thermophilic microbes that can convert human waste to soil. The design won the 2018 BioDesign Challenge, selected from over 1000 international submissions. This funding will assist in the development of a working prototype. The teams aims to deploy a field test of the MycoToilet at the UBC Botanical Garden, which will generate valuable data and create an opportunity to reduce dependency on biocides and other toxic chemicals on campus.