You may have noticed the small structures to the east of the new ECE building in the pictures on display in the website’s photo gallery. These are the mock-ups for the building, structures built to test the building’s features to ensure smooth construction on ECE’s future home. On a complex, energy-efficient building like this one, mock-ups are invaluable.

“Mock-ups are becoming more common in big projects like these,” said Profesor Philip Krein, the chair of the ECE new building committee. “There’s two reasons for it. One is to just show that everything works together. They’ve got to put the right kind of sealants on the building, they’ve got to show that the water proofing system works right, that the air filtration system works right, that the window mounts are all leak-tight and that everything’s good.” All of these are tested on the mock-ups before being applied to the building itself.

“Two is kind of a training component,” Professor Krein continued. “In the sense that the contractors are using a fairly complicated system based on the energy requirements, and they need to make sure that they can do it properly. And it gives the manufacturers of some of those systems the opportunity to come in, show them how it works, set it up, try it out, and they’re not doing that on the building. And it lets them test the kind of complete thing.”

The mock-ups also give people a better idea of what the new building will look like when complete. “You can see the north tower mock-up from the third-floor conference room that’s in CSL. And it’s pretty complete. So you see the stone work, you see the granite, you see the terracotta and the windows.” The terracotta and windows will help transform the look of the building from its current state to its projected one which can be seen in several places on this website, from the banner at the top of the page to the pictures in the Wallpapers section.