Living Lab for innovation in the built environment
Testing solutions in real-world places. Scaling what works.
The CISL Living Lab brings together innovators, businesses, researchers, asset owners, public bodies and policymakers to test and scale solutions for a more sustainable built environment.
At the heart of the Living Lab is a growing ecosystem of testbeds, partners, datasets and innovation communities. Combining the Entopia Building, the Canopy innovation community and a growing network of partner sites across Cambridge, the Living Lab helps promising ideas move from concept to demonstration, and from pilot projects to wider adoption.
While Cambridge provides a unique environment in which to convene researchers, innovators, businesses and public-sector partners, the Living Lab works with organisations across the UK and internationally. From local testbeds and city-scale challenges to collaborations with national and global partners, it provides a platform for developing, testing and scaling solutions with the potential to inform wider market adoption.
By connecting real-world environments with academic insight, industry practice and policy engagement, the Living Lab creates the evidence, partnerships and market conditions needed to accelerate sustainable innovation in the built environment.
Membership and partnership opportunities
Living Lab members become part of a growing community focused on accelerating innovation in the built environment.
Membership can include:
- Participation in collaborative projects, pilots and workshops.
- Access to senior sustainability decision-makers and innovators.
- Invitations to the annual Living Lab Summit.
- Access to research, case studies and digital learning resources.
- Opportunities to contribute assets, expertise and data to shared initiatives.
- Recognition as a member of the Cambridge Living Lab community.
A connected ecosystem for innovation and collaboration
What makes the Living Lab distinctive is its connection to Cambridge's wider innovation ecosystem. Through CISL's Canopy community and a growing network of partners, it brings together innovators, businesses, investors, researchers, policymakers and asset owners to tackle shared built environment challenges.
Using Cambridge as a connected testbed, the Living Lab supports the development of both new innovations and collective, place-based solutions. By combining expertise, assets and real-world environments, it helps organisations co-create, test and scale approaches that would be difficult for any one organisation to deliver alone. From pioneering technologies to collaborative initiatives such as circular economy and resource-sharing projects, the Living Lab generates practical insights with relevance far beyond Cambridge, helping inform sustainable development across the UK and internationally.
Explore Canopy and our innovation ecosystem
Entopia: from demonstration project to Living Lab
The Living Lab builds on the pioneering work of the Entopia Building, CISL's award-winning headquarters and innovation hub in central Cambridge.
A deep sustainable retrofit of a former telephone exchange, Entopia set out to challenge the status quo in building design and delivery. The project achieved Passivhaus EnerPHit, BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Gold certification while pioneering ambitious approaches to circularity, embodied carbon reduction and the use of bio-based materials. The project has since become an internationally recognised example of what can be achieved through leadership, collaboration and innovation in the built environment,
Entopia acts as a knowledge hub and practical testbed where innovators, academics and industry partners can learn, pilot and evaluate new approaches in a live environment. But the Living Lab is not simply about testing solutions within a single building.
The lessons emerging from Entopia continue to inform projects and partnerships across the network. Insights into circularity, sustainable design, leadership and collaboration are helping organisations apply proven approaches within their own buildings, developments and regeneration projects, accelerating the adoption of sustainable solutions across the built environment.
Underpinning CISL’s Living Lab are two digital platforms, our Knowledge Hub – a searchable database of projects and insights helping to shape change – and our Data Hub – a collation of live and historic data which can be used to monitor, verify and explore new approaches to delivery.
Visit the Living Lab
Entopia offers a unique opportunity to see sustainable innovation in practice.
Through practitioner-led tours and discussions, visitors gain first-hand insight into the delivery of an ultra-low-carbon, wellbeing-positive workplace and learn how the building continues to support innovation, experimentation and collaboration through the Living Lab.
Learning and insights
The Living Lab generates practical insights from real-world projects, helping organisations understand what works, what barriers remain, and how sustainable innovations can scale.