Impact of sustainable building design on occupant experience: A human centred approach

Abstract

All too often sustainability in building design is decoupled from user experience. This paper discusses how user comfort, well-being and performance should be put at the centre of the design process and how work beginning at Bath and Exeter, using the newly built VSimulators facility, is helping shape this. From a structural perspective, the drive to reduce material use, the use of more sustainable materials (e.g. CLT) and the desire to improve structural efficiency can lead to building designs which are not governed by ultimate limit state criteria, but rather by serviceability limit states. Reduced stiffness, in particular, leads to undesirable floor vibrations and/or sway in tall buildings. The question arises as to what is an acceptable level of vibration or motion. While it is a relatively simple task to define perception thresholds, acceptability is an altogether more complex problem. Subjective measures of acceptability vary significantly from person to person and is situation, context and task dependent. What's more, it is not just vibrations that affect the acceptability of the indoor building environment; temperature, humidity, air quality, lighting, noise, even smell, all have an influence on whether a building is fit for purpose. Sustainable construction practices, such as passive house design and air tightness, can lead to poor environmental conditions (e.g. increased concentrations of VOCs) unless we consider the impact on the occupants. Thus, the work being carried out using the VSimulator facility aims to understand these complex interactions between structural, environmental and human factors, using a multidisciplinary approach involving psychology, physiology, engineering, building physics and health. The challenges this issue poses and the unique facilities developed to address these challenges are described in this paper.

The Impact of Design Interventions on Occupant Satisfaction: A Workplace Pre-and Post-Occupancy Evaluation Analysis

“…Sustainable design researchers have shown a growing interest in understanding and measuring how occupants perceive the built environment [1,2]. One prominent approach is using the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) categories to evaluate whether occupants are satisfied with the building and if it supports their health and well-being [3].…”

“…The aim of this paper is to illustrate a comprehensive measure of occupant satisfaction in the built environment via the pre-and post-occupancy analysis of the Cuningham Group headquarters. Therefore, two corresponding objectives are (1) explaining the data collection process which informed the design interventions and (2) examining the impact evaluation of these interventions on occupant satisfaction. The national renowned Cuningham Group asked the team to conduct pre-and post-occupancy analysis in 2016 and 2018 for their headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.…”

Research on Design of Stalk Furniture Based on the Concept and Application of Miryoku Engineering Theory

“…(5) Style expression. The rural-style stalk furniture, in view of the word "animal and plant image" extracted from the perceptual factors of the previous evaluation grid diagram, make use of insects in the field as an expression element, blending the image of insects into its design to reflect its style [25]. The outer frame of the furniture is made of stainless steel, which retains the original luster of the metal, so that it reflects the concept of "natural simplicity" and "integral harmony".…”

AgiBuild: A Proposed Framework for Agile Building Adaptation Project Management Based on Literature Review

“…In the context of building adaptation projects, this includes anyone who will be using the building such as the staff that works in the building, a visitor, or a service provider. The project teams need to have a holistic and multidisciplinary approach involving psychology, physiology, engineering, building physics and health to understand the complex interactions between humans, buildings, and their environment [43]. The technology component was newly added to the framework after the interviews with industry experts.…”