In the early 2000s, CMTA education clients began using their buildings as teaching tools, pulling back the curtain on building systems so staff and students alike could understand the effect of systems and user behavior on performance. Watching students lead tours of their high-performance buildings and listening to them explain the systems and observing the interactions between the building and its occupants inspired our team of building science leaders, which was the start of a bigger conversation about how to share these “living laboratories” more broadly.
