Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech’s Portable Laboratory on Uncommon Ground project is set to travel to Africa this May, where college of veterinary medicine researchers will use the lab as a working housing facility. Currently, the researchers are working to study the affects of human interaction on chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park.

According to Matt Lutz, assistant professor of interior design at Tech, and one of the faculty members involved with the project.

“We hope the lab will be there for a long, long time. It is indefinite right now what will happen, but it will probably be moved around a lot, as the research is needed,” he said.

The current research project, Bush-to-Base Bioinformatics is facilitated in this area of Africa and sponsored by Tech’s college of veterinary medicine. “Bush-to-Base Bio-Informatics is an electronic architecture designed to facilitate the study of the dynamic interrelationships between animals, humans, and the environment,” according to http://www.bush2base.vt.edu/mission.html.

Matt Lutz and Steve Thompson, graduate program chair in the School of Architecture and Design, developed the idea for the P.L.U.G project back in 2001 while co-teaching a design and building course over the summer.

“I was involved with an earlier project that became the prototype for this idea,” Thompson said. “It began mostly as a research design experiment to test a portable, noninvasive foundation system for a lightweight building that could survive in an ecotourism environment.”

The actual structure is still being put together on the Tech campus, but once it makes the move to Africa, researchers will reassemble it on location.

“As of now, we could use some more volunteers right now to help us finish building the smaller pieces so we can get it finished by at least the end of march,” Lutz said. “We’d then like to take it outside for a month of field testing. The only problem is that it is designed for the climate in Africa, not for a Virginia winter.”

Most of the building supplies for the project actually came from outside donations. For example, Strongwell, located in Bristol, Virginia, donated the fiberglass rods that support the superstructure.

The rest of the structural makeup consists of  “webbed aluminum beams on the ground level cam-lock with vertical end panel structures. The end panel structures cam-lock and support the upper webbed aluminum beams. Lightweight structural insulated panels in-fill the beams and form the laboratory space on the ground level and a sleeping loft on the upper level,” Lutz said, adding that “the structure is comfy in terms of camping, and obviously it’s nice to be eight feet off the ground rather than in a tent.”

The student team form the College of Architecture and Urban Studies includes Nathan King, the student project leader, a graduate student in industrial design who will travel with the lab to Tanzania, Jennifer Ash, a senior in interior design, Howard Chen, a senior industrial design major, Jon Mills, also a senior industrial design major, and Jason Zawitkowski, an architecture graduate student, architecture.

Overall the benefit of the P.L.U.G. concept will be the fact that it is “versatile and portable,” Lutz said. “It takes enormous amounts of work to fund and carryout a project like this. It will be great to see its success.”