scholarly journals Human Factors in Green Building: Building Types and Users’ Needs

Buildings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhonghua Gou

The Special Issue on “Human Factors in Green Building” addresses the design of indoor environment quality for users’ needs. The collected papers cover various building types and the research highlights the different needs of users. In working environments, employees’ stress is the main concern in the workplace design, especially for open plan offices where lack of privacy and over exposure to environmental stress have been reported. In residential environments, residents have great opportunities to adjust their environments to suit their needs; therefore, passive design such as natural ventilation is explored in residential buildings with climates such as cold or humid tropical. In healthcare environments, the papers in this issue are concerned with the needs of patients, especially the older adults who require special care. In learning environments, thermal and visual aspects are investigated for optimal comfort conditions and learning outcomes. The special issue demonstrates insightful critical thinking of indoor environment quality and proposes a new understanding for more practical design solutions. This editorial note is a brief review of the 12 papers, concluding with reflections about design of built environments to meet users’ needs.

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 659
Author(s):  
Magdalena Grzegorzewska ◽  
Paweł Kirschke

The green building certification system has long-lasting benefits by improving building efficiency and sustainability. The ultimate goal of such classification is to promote the preservation of the global environment as well as the occupants’ well-being and their health. In this paper, we present examples of buildings that have been designed and built in Poland and have been certified with BREEAM, LEED and WELL. Our study investigates human factors in certification systems and examines the WELL Building Standard as a supplement to other green systems, which will probably be the most popular in the future. The green building movement should prioritize pro-human factors and the associated environmental beliefs to improve indoor environment quality for users’ needs. We present this matter on the example of the Polish office space market, providing statistics and analyzing the architecture of six certified office buildings from Warsaw, Poznań and Wrocław. They are a representative sample of buildings designed following the certification regime. It was demonstrated how this aids in improving work comfort, enhances the program of office spaces and the organization of service spaces within buildings, which increases the rank of this architecture and positively affects the urban environment.


Facilities ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 411-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Zalejska-Jonsson

Purpose – The aims of this paper is to investigate the overall satisfaction of occupants of green and conventional residential buildings and their perception of indoor environment quality (IEQ) and to study factors that may cause occupants’ dissatisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a survey sent to occupants of comparable green and conventional multi-family buildings. The difference in responses between occupants of green and conventional buildings was analysed using Mann–Whitney (rank sum) test. The ordered logistic models were applied to the data to test whether the overall satisfaction changes depending on the level of acceptance of indoor environment quality and whether the building environmental profile and the apartment tenure affect occupant satisfaction. Findings – The results show that both categories of occupants are very satisfied with their apartments and that there is no statistically significant difference between the stated overall satisfaction of occupants living in green and conventional buildings, although a difference was found in the acceptance level for thermal and sound quality. The research highlights the importance of occupant feedback, user-friendly technical installations and the ability to control indoor environment. This knowledge is important for designers, engineers and developers alike in enabling them to improve dwelling quality and minimize post-occupancy problems. Research limitations/implications – It was not possible to include physical measurements of IEQ parameters; the analysis is based only on occupants’ responses, which may carry a certain subjectivity. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding of IEQ from occupant perspective and to knowledge on green building performance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracie J Reed ◽  
Peggi L Clouston ◽  
Simi Hoque ◽  
Paul R Fisette

This study examines the differences between two environmental assessment methods for the K-12 education sector: the United States Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED Schools Version 3.0 and the British Research Establishment's (BRE) BREEAM Education issue 2.0. Credit requirements are compared side-by-side and against recommendations from researchers in areas such as acoustics, lighting and indoor environment quality. Strengths in the two schemes and areas for improvement are highlighted, with acknowledgement that each scheme offers components and techniques from which the other could benefit.


Buildings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Zalejska-Jonsson

The study presented in this paper focuses on the subjective opinions of occupants of multistory residential buildings by examining the relationship between occupants’ satisfaction and indoor environment quality, and analysing the effect the problems experienced with noise level may have on general satisfaction and the perceived acoustic quality. The analysis is based on data collected through surveys addressed to adults living in green and conventional buildings. The results show that occupants are very satisfied with their apartments, and subjectively rated acoustic quality received very high scores. The responses indicate that noise from neighbours has been experienced relatively seldom by occupants; however, the analysis shows that it is the factor that has the strongest effect on satisfaction with acoustic quality. We have found that the environmental profile of a building has a significant effect on general satisfaction expressed by occupants; however, this effect has not been confirmed for acoustic quality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 04082
Author(s):  
Jie Zong ◽  
Wenjun He ◽  
Lingna Wang ◽  
Hongkai Chai ◽  
Yingying Zhao ◽  
...  

Strengthening indoor ventilation is an important measure to improve air quality. In transitional season between spring and summer, a university classroom in Jinan city was selected as the research object. Mechanical air supply is adopted to solve the problem of insufficient fresh air or excessive carbon dioxide concentration in the classroom. CO2 concentration and air change rates are compared in natural ventilation and mechanical classrooms. The experiment shows that the indoor CO2 concentration of mechanical ventilation classroom is relatively low. Under natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation and mixed ventilation, the average air change rates were 1.05 h-1, 1.83 h-1 and 2.7 h-1, respectively. According to the statistics analysis of the questionnaire, 72.84% of the students hope to install the mechanical ventilation in the classroom.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zanon ◽  
Callegaro ◽  
Albatici

Visual quality is an important component of indoor environment quality and greatly affects inhabitants’ perception of the living space. Nevertheless, the lighting design of residential buildings is usually underestimated by both designers and standards. This paper presents an integrated index for evaluating the visual quality of an indoor environment in residential buildings. The main parameters considered are daylight access, probability of glare from daylight and electric illumination, maintained illuminance, and color temperature. These aspects are evaluated throughout a whole year using a fixed set of metrics and are combined using relative weights. It was decided to also consider qualitative parameters in order to give more importance to some psychological aspects of visual comfort. Finally, the building visual quality index is obtained by a weighted average of the results of each room with the addition of the qualitative parameters. The applicability of the index was tested through the simulation of a dwelling that will be built and monitored in the context of the Comfort for Sustainable Buildings in the Alps (CASA) research project. The building visual quality index proved to be useful during the design process, allowing for improvements in both electric illumination and daylight access through a comparison of different solutions. This study could represent a step towards the holistic evaluation of indoor environment quality.


2012 ◽  
Vol 433-440 ◽  
pp. 5821-5827
Author(s):  
Hafsa Al Omari ◽  
E. Luma Al Dabbagh

The green building or green architecture has come to light as a strong architectural movement at the end of 1990's and as a main trend in architectural practice. The architectural green is a modern architectural philosophy which deals with the competent relationship between the functional constructive systems and its vital environmental, by controlling the inputs and outputs of this system with the least negative effects on the environment and occupant's health, and the least energy consumption during the various stages of the building ( construction, operation, maintenance and destruction ) to achieve the functional activities and the inventive and efficient architectural structures. The importance of this movement lies in trying to achieve the sustainable development in its environmental, social and economic aspects because of the problems that developed and developing countries ( e.g. Iraq ) face such as energy consumption and pollution. Several international standards of different classifications, depending on local context of each country, has been appeared. Some of these tools are (BREEAM, LEED, CO-CHPS Colorado, GBTool, CASBEE) which aim to assess the performance of the building from green Architecture's perspective. Although there is a similarity in the classification levels including the sustainable location, how to use (water, energy and atmosphere, materials, resources) effectively, indoor environment quality and the design's innovation, they differ in other aspects that its importance relies on the environmental and local context. The problem of our research was the absence of the practical evaluation tool of the green building ( school buildings ) for the Iraq's local context in general and Mosul in particular, compatibly with the city climate. The research aims at making theoretical construction to identify the assessment indicators of the school buildings from green architecture's perspective, in order to create suitable and general assessment tool for schools building in Mosul city which can help improving the performance of these schools, decreasing the effect on the health, sparing energy coasts, and other benefits in the stages of the project ( pre-construction, construction, post-construction ). The research supposes that the multi-dimensional designing strategy is an active tool used in establishing the tool classification of assessment. For reaching goals, the research adopts the theoretical method and questionnaire. Finally, the research provides an assessment tool for school building in Mosul from the green architecture's perspective (AGBS) Green Building Assessment Tool for school ) in conformity with the local context of the city for enabling the designer to follow it in order to achieve the investment within his school architectural products. Results indicate six categories for assessment tool. First Sustainable Sites category (SS) which have the greatest weight 25.7%, , then Indoor Environment Quality(IEQ) 24.35667%. then Materials & Resources (M&R), Energy & Atomosphere (A&E), Water Efficiency(WE),and Innovotion in design (ID), have 17.32% ، 10.5% ، 3.987181% , Respectively.


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