Highlights• The biophilic design approach has potential benefits in extreme cold climates, especially for Nordic occupants.• Lighting design should be developed to deal with the challenging state of living and working in northern latitudes.• Non-image-forming effects of light have become the missing link between human needs and lighting design standards.• Adaptive envelopes should be developed to optimize biophilic quality and fulfil the photobiological needs of Nordic people.

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For mid-latitude cities, higher summer temperatures due to climate change are a cause for concern because they aggravate the urban heat island phenomenon and reduce thermal comfort inside buildings. By acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skills, architects and urban designers can become key actors in adaptation to climate change. Two workshops bringing together architects and urban designers provided evidence of deficiencies in this area. We hypothesize that a design support tool (DST) focused on the issue of adaptation of midlatitude cities to rising summer temperatures could help improve knowledge and skills of professionals in the field. The first section presents the results taken from a review and classification of DSTs, which highlight the tools' features that are likely to reach this goal. Tools of the "hybrid" category seem most appropriate. To verify this, seven DSTs were selected and tested by fourteen students enrolled in a graduate-level architecture design studio. The second section presents the results from this test, including an analysis of the final projects, a webbased questionnaire and two focus groups. The relevance of hybrid approaches is established, but the results bring into question the capacity of a single DST to meet the individual and multiple needs of professionals.Please cite this article as: Dubois, C., et al., Design support tools to sustain climate change adaptation at the local level: A review and reflection on their suitability. Frontiers of Architectural Research (2015), http://dx.

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This study explored the potential of natural light to enhance wooden interior environments. Under Nordic light, natural materials such as wood finishes present an opportunity to create warm, bright, and pleasant atmospheres, enhancing psychological well-being and comfort. The objectives of this project were twofold: first, to study the diversity of northern sky conditions in terms of cloud cover and thickness, and, second, to evaluate the impacts of the diversity of natural light on five wooden scale models. The methodology involved weather data collection that took place during the spring equinox in Quebec City. In order to create a cloudiness scale, sky condition data and photometric measurements were collected. A photographic survey occurred in five scale models made with interior wooden finishes of varying color combinations, documenting the impact of sky diversity on brightness, hue, and contrast. Simultaneous scale model studies under a real sky allowed direct comparison under the same lighting conditions. There was a remarkable diversity of visual ambiences for a southeast-oriented space depending on the position of the sun and sky conditions. Gray-dyed wooden finishes created dull and unchanging atmospheres, while yellow oaked surfaces allowed various dynamic ambiences.

This paper develops an integrated design framework of adaptive building façades (ABFs) to respond to photobiological and thermal needs of occupants, biophilic factors, energy requirements and climatic features in Northern Canada, i.e. near and above 50°N. The paper discusses the importance of biophilic and photobiological factors and ABFs to improve occupants’ health and human–nature relations and deal with the extreme climate in Northern Canada where non-adapted buildings that could negatively affect occupants’ well-being. The paper shows that existing ABFs must be further developed for northern applications in terms of (i) the physical structure and configuration of components, (ii) the design of solar shading/louver panels to address photobiological and biophilic requirements, (iii) the development of lighting adaptation scenarios to respond to biophilic and photobiological needs, local photoperiods and energy issues and (iv) the overall biophilic quality for accessibility to natural patterns. The ABFs’ framework was developed in three phases including: (1) process environmental data, (2) produce adaptation scenarios and (3) operate adaptation scenarios. The research discussed major issues of all phases that must be further studied, especially the development of hourly/daily/seasonally lighting adaptation scenarios. The paper develops a holistic parametric methodology to integrate and optimize major design variables of ABF’s components.

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Emerging research on the impact of interior finishes, more specifically wood, is beginning to shed light on informed design opportunities. As a natural building material with unique features, wood creates warm and pleasant atmospheres and has the potential of enhancing the well-being of occupants. This research attempted to better understand how occupants perceive wood in built environments and whether its indoor use influenced the satisfaction of occupants. The comfort of occupants may have been influenced by factors that were unrelated to the indoor environmental quality, which caused difficulties in comparing interior finishes in existing environments and limited research in this field. An exploratory comparative study, within a post-occupancy evaluation framework, investigated the subjective perception of occupants in relation to physical comfort factors. Thirty-six occupants completed a questionnaire to examine comfort satisfaction in a multifunctional room with extensive wooden interior finishes in comparison with a similar space without wood surfaces. The results indicated that occupants were more satisfied in the extensive wood surfaced room in terms of lighting, noise, and temperature, despite the similar environmental conditions in both spaces. Adjectives often used to describe the wood room included bright, pleasant, modern, and warm. Architects should consider the subjective qualities of wood when designing comfortable buildings.