HUBS website — 2026 rebuild

The new Human Building Synergy Laboratory site, framed around Human–AI–Building Interaction. Built with Eleventy.

The current live site is still the old HTML at the repo root. Nothing here goes live until you change Settings → Pages → Source to "GitHub Actions".

Working on it locally

cd renew_2026
npm install     # once
npm start       # http://localhost:8080, live-reloads as you edit
npm run build   # production build into _site/

Where the content lives

You should almost never need to touch HTML. Everything is in src/_data/*.yml.

File	What it controls
exchange.yml	Fig. 1 on the homepage — the whole human/AI/building conversation, including both branches
site.yml	Lab name, the title-card phrase, the headline, contact details, navigation
edges.yml	The three edges of the triangle
scales.yml	The five research scales and their copy
news.yml	Every news item. Homepage, /news/ and the RSS feed all read this one list
people.yml	Director + current members
alumni.yml	Former members
projects.yml	Funded projects
publications.yml	Conference PDFs in src/assets/publications/
director.yml	CV content for the Director page
courses.yml	Teaching
sponsors.yml	Sponsor and partner logos
research.yml	Software list (and legacy theme copy)
redirects.yml	Old .html URLs → new locations. Don't delete these — they keep old Google results and external links working

Editing the exchange

src/_data/exchange.yml is the file. Each step:

- from: ai          # human | ai | bldg — which lifeline it sits in
  to: human         # who it's addressed to (draws the arrow)
  kind: msg         # msg | think | tele | act | choice
  text: >-
    What gets said.
  state: { co2: "1140" }   # optional — updates the Building state panel

kind decides the visual treatment:

• msg — a message between parties (outline box + arrow)
• think — the AI reasoning to itself (dashed, no arrow)
• tele — the building reporting sensor data upward (dotted, mono)
• act — the building physically doing something (solid block — committed)
• choice — the visitor picks the human's reply, branching the exchange

Steps tagged branch: accept or branch: override only appear on that path.

Adding a news item

Add a block at the top of src/_data/news.yml:

- date: 2026-09
  type: publication
  text: >-
    A new journal article, titled
    <a href="https://doi.org/..." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Some Title</a>,
    is accepted and published by Journal Name!

type is one of: publication, grant, conference, seminar, service, people, outreach, milestone.

YAML gotcha

If a value contains a colon followed by a space, quote it:

role: "Co-PI (PI: Dr. Someone)"   # quotes required
role: PI                          # fine without

Design system

Three parties, three colours, used everywhere — the title card, the headline, the lifelines, the arrows, the section labels:

	Colour	Meaning
Human	amber	the occupant
AI	cyan	the reasoning agent
Building	violet	the physical systems

Form encodes commitment: outline = reversible talk, dotted = telemetry, solid = a physical act that actually happened.

No Bootstrap, no jQuery, no Font Awesome, no webfonts. Icons are inline SVG in src/_includes/icons.njk; styles are hand-written in src/css/main.css.

Images

Source images are optimised once into WebP and committed. To re-run after adding new source images:

./tools/optimize-images.sh <source-assets-dir> src/assets

Requires cwebp and gif2webp (brew install webp).

Licensing

Two licenses, matching how the lab already releases work on Zenodo:

	License
Code — src/css, src/js, templates, eleventy.config.js, tools/	MIT
Content — src/_data/**, lab photographs, page prose	CC BY-NC 4.0

Not licensed for reuse: portraits in src/assets/profile/ (the people depicted retain their rights), and HUBS / University of Arizona marks.

See LICENSE for the full text. Material produced in the course of UA employment may also fall under University IP policy.

Going live

1. Push this folder to main.
2. Watch the run under the Actions tab — it builds but does not serve yet.
3. When you're happy: Settings → Pages → Source → GitHub Actions.
4. Move src/CNAME verification: the file already contains hubs.engr.arizona.edu, so the custom domain carries over.
5. Submit https://hubs.engr.arizona.edu/sitemap.xml in Google Search Console to speed up re-indexing.
6. Once verified, the old .html files at the repo root can be deleted.