HOBEL’s experimental facilities are located at the Bluefactory site of EPFL Fribourg and include dedicated laboratory space, environmental climatic chambers, sensing platforms, and advanced instrumentation for indoor air quality and building-performance research.
Our facilities allow us to study how pollutant sources, occupancy, ventilation, thermal systems, air movement, and control strategies shape indoor environmental quality, human exposure, and energy performance. They support controlled experiments and field-ready measurements across scales — from the human breathing zone to rooms and buildings.
A unique experimental ecosystem
A central part of HOBEL’s research infrastructure is its suite of environmental climatic chambers, operational since 2021. These chambers were designed to enable controlled, room-scale studies of indoor air quality, ventilation, thermal conditions, pollutant dynamics, and human exposure under realistic building conditions.
Facilities with these integrated capabilities are rare internationally and provide HOBEL with unique capabilities for experimental research at the intersection of indoor air science, building engineering, and human health. They allow us to simulate and measure complex indoor environmental processes, including pollutant emissions and transformations, air movement, ventilation effectiveness, thermal conditions, and occupant-related exposures.
The chambers are complemented by advanced research instrumentation, a breathing and walking thermal manikin, and a custom-developed coughing head capable of simulating respiratory aerosol emissions. Together, this infrastructure supports pioneering studies on ultrafine particles, bioaerosols, human emissions, respiratory exposure, smart ventilation, and healthy low-carbon building strategies.
Environmental Chamber
Built in 2019, HOBEL’s environmental chamber is suitable to test the effects of specified environmental conditions with or without human subjects on indoor air quality, exposure, ventilation, room air distribution, thermal comfort, etc.
The Cells
The Controlled Environments for Living Lab Studies (CELLS) is a test facility that belongs to the Smart Living Lab which HOBEL belongs to. This is a small building comprised of two identical rooms, modelling the dimensions of a typical double office based on SIA 2024.
Laboratory Equipment
HOBEL employs state-of-the-art air quality instrumentation, as well as medium-grade portable monitors and low-cost sensors for creating distributed indoor and outdoor air quality networks. Read on to discover some of the key instrumentation used…