Vital Signs Lab (VSL) is a collective of researchers and designers who share a common interest in healthy building environments. It is located in the Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Geografía, at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile. VSL supports research centered on human wellbeing, comfort, indoor air quality, energy use in new and existing buildings in the built environment. The lab also offers technical support to courses that measure, analyze, and design systems within the University as well as external consulting to architectural firms and institutions.
VSL is defined as space for exploration, diagnostics, evaluation, interpretation, and a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of our human environments. We propose a diagnostics methodology of acquiring the main vitals of built spaces.
At the Vital–Signs Lab, we tackle complex research questions related to design of our built environment. Our exploration is driven by a belief that buildings and cities are living, dynamic objects of study. Specifically, our interest is finding how to improve the quality of living spaces where humans interact. To design, prototype, and evaluate we work closely with interdisciplinary collaborators / specialist / researchers / community / agents within the society in urban planning, geography, physics, engineering, electronics, aerospace, computational engineering, medicine, public health, epidemiology, and many other fields.
Among our overarching research goals are:
