The essence of a view window (VW) in an office building is not only to bring an optimal balance between daylight and electric light, but also for psychological and health purpose. VW does not only allow the admittance of light and views, but indirectly affects the productivity and psychological wellbeing of office occupants; it has a link to the sustainability in both conventional and green buildings. This paper defines the function of a view window as it relates to green office building. Through literature review and an experiment conducted in room 432-01 located at B11 Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The function of VW in a green office building is highlighted; and the findings show that a VW would enhance sustainability in an office setting and has a dimension greater than 750mm above a finish floor level and less or equal to 2300mm above a finish floor level and with a wall to window ratio (WWR) of 25% to 40%.

The implementation of effective public awareness programs for environmental sustainability depends on certain symbolic steps that require the contribution and participation of each stakeholder. This aspect is generally believed to be to a larger extent based on the understanding of the cultural, economic, political and environmental realities of the domain under consideration. This article assesses the level of environmental sustainability awareness of some schools in Mubi, a locality in the extreme North-Eastern part of Nigeria with its unique cultures and attitudes towards the subject. The teacher and his students were targeted in the survey since this is one important institution upon which the future of societies is based. The survey conducted reveals the level of practice of environmental sustainability among this strong media of information dissemination (primary and secondary schools). Areas of concern in the result of the assessment were highlighted. Recommendations in areas of further improvements were suggested.

This paper evaluates the performance of direct real estate in a mixed-asset portfolio, to ascertain whether the inclusion of real estate in the portfolio helps it perform better or not. Annual Transaction prices of government bonds, treasury bills, development stocks and commercial papers for a ten year period (2005-2014) were retrieved from the CBN bulletin. Annual rental values for commercial offices were collected through questionnaires administered on 220 out of 309 estate firms within the study location using simple random sampling technique. 165 questionnaires were returned and analyzed. The portfolio risk and returns were calculated with and without real estate to check performance at both levels. Correlation analysis was used to compare the strength of relationship and co-movement of assets. Findings show that real estate performed better than other assets giving higher returns though with higher risk. This can be attributed to the 2009 crash in the Nigerian stock market which made investors turn to real estate on the basis of security. However, correlation analyses of the assets revealed a moderately positive correlation indicating little or no diversification benefit. This paper recommends further study using direct and indirect real estate only to determine the level of performance on a risk and return basis.