Post-occupancy evaluation in indoor comfort conditions for green office buildings

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal the relationship between the post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and indoor comfort conditions for green office buildings. First, six office buildings in Turkey with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-New Construction (LEED-NC) certification were evaluated for their envelope features. Second, a post-occupancy survey was conducted to investigate the indoor comfort of green office building users. The post-occupancy questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha reliability of 0.956) was evaluated with regression and cross-tabulation methods using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics) Program. The results show that envelope characteristics are important for POE of building performance and occupant indoor comfort satisfaction levels are related to a personal workplace location.

An Environmental Quality Assessment of Office Buildings: The Impact of a Glass Façade on Users in Different Climate Contexts in Croatia

“…However, excessive exposure of the glass façade to solar radiation (especially in areas with warm climates) can significantly contribute to overheating of the interior space, unpleasant glare, and increased cooling energy consumption [7,14,30,38,41,46,61]. Office buildings with glazed façades in warm climates should have an appropriate shading system (ideally on the outside of the façade) to prevent overheating of the interior space [3,37,48]. If the building does not have a built-in shading system, the mechanical ventilation and air conditioning system will have to consume larger amounts of energy to achieve a comfortable stay in the interior space.…”

“…Since 2005, the number of published publications researching indoor comfort in office buildings has been increasing [33][34][35]. Subjective methods such as occupants' surveys [36,37] are used in the analysis of the individual preferences of the users according to the conditions of the internal environment. Dynamic simulations using software can be of great help in researching the topic of indoor environment quality [38,39].…”

“…Their research was conducted via computer simulation (without a users' survey). Ayçam et al [37] showed the possibility of combining the post-occupancy survey and analysis of the envelope features concerning the energy and atmosphere parameter in office buildings, without real-time monitoring of the indoor climate data in various climate contexts. The literature review indicates the need for analysis through the combination of office glass facade features examined via energy and atmosphere parameters and their impact on user comfort in various climate contexts.…”