When Jason Stenson drove up to a barn in Damascus, Oregon, four years ago, he knew what he hoped to find inside, but he never imagined it would become known as The Pickle Box.

Stenson is a research assistant who works with G.Z. "Charlie" Brown in the Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory at the UO’s White Stag block. The researchers needed a big box “with insulated walls, so we could heat it or cool it and keep it that way” while testing occupants’ comfort levels over a wide range of combinations, Brown said.

Inside the barn, Stenson was about to encounter the Pickle Box: a 10-by-12-by-10-foot walk-in refrigerator, which he, Brown, and ESBL colleagues would eventually craft into a research tool now officially called the Climate Chamber. (It’s called the Pickle Box because its previous use was by a farmer to store pickles.)

The chamber is a research device for architects, designers, engineers, utilities and product manufacturers seeking detailed and quantifiable data on human comfort evaluation and product testing. It can simulate any building.

On Thursday, May 29, the climate chamber will be open to the general public for the first time, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the UO in Portland’s White Stag block, 70 N.W. Couch St. Portland Business Journal’s Sustainable Business Oregon wrote about the Climate Chamber, http://sustainablebusinessoregon.com/articles/2014/05/how-portlands-pickle-box-will-make.html?ana=twt.

In addition to the public debutof the climate chamber, the ESBL open house will offer tours and demonstrations of the lab’s other research instruments including the Heliodon, which simulates the sun to assess daylighting and shading strategies; and the Artificial Sky, which simulates an overcast sky to analyze daylighting strategies.

Under Brown’s stewardship, the ESBL has secured more than $20 million in research funding and assisted in reducing energy consumption in millions of square feet of building space in over thirty years of operation.

More information is available on the A&AA webpage.

– by Marti Gerdes, School of Architecture and Allied Arts