A Case Study of Post Occupancy Evaluation of an Educational Building with LEED Platinum Rating

The Building environment and the performance of its systems directly impact the experience and comfort of a building occupant. This POE study examines the relationship between building and human performance. LEED-rated building was selected as a case study to analyze its performance after being in operation. The occupants’ satisfaction was evaluated in terms of the thermal comfort and human use with the application of online questionnaire. The environmental impact was determined through various measurements including room temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, lighting levels and carbon emission. The outcomes of this study identify the building systems efficiencies as well as the systems in need of retrofit. The POE results can help building designers address user needs more effectively and fine-tune the systems to improve sustainability.

Post Occupancy Evaluation of Students’ Satisfaction with Hostel Facilities in Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State, Nigeria

The study focuses on post occupancy evaluation of students’ satisfaction with hostels facilities in Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State with a view to determine factors that promote users’ satisfaction with the hostel facility in terms of its services/amenities provided, structural features, environmental features, accommodation details and locational attributes. The hostel is wholly under the management and control of the Polytechnic. Four Hundred and Sixty (460) respondents were taken as the sample size for the study. 28 structured questionnaires were administered to the workforce of the hostel management using purposive sampling while 432 structured questionnaires were administered to the students occupying the school hostel. A total of 341 (74%) questionnaires was returned and found valid for analysis. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistical techniques such as frequency distribution table, Weighted Mean Score (WMS) and Relative Importance Indexes (RII). Findings revealed that there were mixed levels of satisfaction with elements of student hostel facilities. There was a strong indication of satisfaction with the environmental features compared to the other four elements of the hostel facilities. The students were dissatisfied with facilities either because they are inadequate in number or quality or because of the location. The study recommends that the polytechnic management should ensure that facilities that aid students' academic performance should be prioritized. This will help to improve the satisfaction level among students with hostel facilities.

EXPERTS’ IDENTIFICATION OF POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION CONCEPTS RELEVANT TO BUILDING PERFORMANCE

Post occupancy evaluation is an approach in determining building performance based primarily on users' views. These views are sorted and evaluated by experts in the building industry for better design solutions. The Architects’ Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON) upholds this view by providing post occupancy analysis and evaluation under phase 7 as a post construction activity in the professional payment schedule. However, minimal guidelines were set for easy adoption in the post-occupancy evaluation of buildings by ARCON for general application. To this end, this study aimed to identify the POE performance indicators and criteria relevant to building performance to guide future evaluations. The building typology considered was an architecture department building in a university. The quantitative survey involved ten architects selected through purposive sampling, and the SPSS descriptive statistics analysed data. The study considered forty criteria under three performance indicators: Design Quality (DQ), Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), and Quality of Building Support Services (QBSS). The experts rated twenty-four of the performance criteria to be relevant; thirteen were rated as moderately relevant, while three were below moderately relevant. The study recommended that proximity to sports facility and place of worship under accessibility should not be considered in POE of this building typology.

Exploring sketches as conceptual data: a semiological experiment on moods visualisation among architectural students

PurposeSketching is a creative skill that most architects develop over their long period of study and is considered an effective medium for communicating imaginative thinking and conceptual ideas in architecture. As a concept, mood is generally associated with imagining specific ambiance and spatial experience during the schematic phase of the architectural design process. While most architectural research on mood revolves around post-occupancy evaluation, colour effect and lighting comfort, few studies have been conducted to systematically investigate conceptual issues related to mood imagination. Besides, there has been little attempt to appreciate sketches as a reliable conceptual data source for architectural research.Design/methodology/approachTo bridge this knowledge gap, this paper explores a semiological analysis of mood visualisation using architectural sketches. By framing the experiment within the architecture education context, the paper begins by discussing the relationship between sketching, mood and semiology in architecture. The discussion continues by highlighting methodological issues in the design of our experiment. The experiment comprised architecture students from undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Following the visual and textual data derived from the experiment, two semiological analyses, namely, mood sign analysis and mood signifier analysis, were conducted to understand their imaginative thinking.FindingsThe results revealed significant preferential differences between the students on the use of specific semiotic representation and design language to conceptualise their mood idea.Originality/valueAs a preliminary experiment, this study constitutes an early attempt to further explore potential research related to architectural sketches and the creative imagination that may be beneficial to designers, art psychologists, educators and researchers alike.

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

Understanding how occupants perceive the built environment is a growing interest in sustainability research. This article looks into how design interventions in a workplace renovation project impact occupants’ satisfaction through a pre-and post-occupancy survey. In two years (from 2016 to 2018), an interdisciplinary research team from the University of Minnesota administered online occupancy surveys at the headquarters of the Cuningham Group, a national renowned design firm in Minnesota. The surveys included 12 indoor environmental quality categories (with 26 criteria on a 7-point Likert scale) that measured how occupants perceived their existing workplace and the renovated environment. Mann–Whitney U tests and Chi-square tests were conducted for 12 indoor environmental quality categories between the pre-and post-surveys. Results showed that occupants’ satisfaction significantly increased with the design interventions in the renovated workplace. Perceived work performance and health also improved in the post-survey. Among 12 indoor environmental quality categories, occupants perceived the biggest improvements in lighting such as adjustability and quality of task lighting. Design interventions in electric lighting, especially improved ease of control, effectiveness of automatic systems, plus visual and acoustic comfort, contributed to occupants’ satisfaction. Overall, the pre-and post-occupancy evaluation survey analysis confirmed the positive impact of the renovated Cuningham Group facility. The article presents a comprehensive measure of the impact of the data-driven design interventions derived from pre-and post-occupancy evaluation surveys on occupant satisfaction.

POST OCCUPANCY EVALUATION OF ACCESSIBLITY FOR DISABILITIES IN PLAZA MULIA SAMARINDA

Shopping center is one of the public facilities visited by various people, it should provide facilities that pay attention to accessibility, namely the facilities provided for everyone, including people with disabilities to realize equal opportunities in all aspects of life. Problems that are often encountered in shopping center facilities are that they are not yet fully easy to use by persons with disabilities, making it difficult for them to carry out their shopping activities. it in all fields. This study aims to evaluate the accessibility of persons with disabilities at shopping centers in Samarinda with a case study of Plaza Mulia,. This research is a Post-Occupational Evaluation (EPH) to determine the level of success of a building's performance in providing satisfaction to its users, using quantitative and qualitative mixed methods. The results showed that the percentage of the overall conformity of the building to the standards of Permen PUPR No. 14/PRT/M/2017 is 71.45%, which means the building has good accessibility. However, there is still a very low percentage if you look at each aspect, in diffable toilet and urinals.Abstrak: Pusat perbelanjaan merupakan salah satu fasilitas publik yang banyak di kunjungi oleh beragam orang, seharusnya perlu menyediakan fasilitas yang memperhatikan aksesibilitas yaitu kemudahan yang disediakan bagi semua orang, termasuk penyandang disabilitas untuk mewujudkan kesamaan kesempatan dalam segala aspek kehidupan. Permasalahan yang seringkali ditemui di fasilitas pusat perbelanjaan yaitu belum sepenuhnya mudah digunakan oleh penyandang disabilitas, sehingga menyulitkan mereka dalam menjalankan aktivitas berbelanja. Pemerintah telah mengeluarkan beberapa peraturan yang berkaitan dengan aksesibilitas fasilitas publik, namun pada pelaksanaannya pemerintah daerah masih belum sepenuhnya memperhatikan penyediaan fasilitas-fasilitas aksesibilitas pada semua bidang. Penelitian ini bertujuan melakukan evaluasi terhadap aksesibilitas penyandang disabilitas pada pusat perbelanjaan di Samarinda dengan studi kasus Plaza Mulia. Penelitian ini adalah Evaluasi Purna Huni (EPH) untuk mengetahui tingkat keberhasilan kinerja suatu bangunan dalam memberi kepuasan terhadap penggunanya, dengan menggunakan metode gabungan (mixed methods) kuantitatif dan kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa persentase kesesuaian bangunan secara keseluruhan terhadap standar Permen PUPR No. 14/PRT/M/2017 sebesar 71,45 %, yang berarti bangunan sudah cukup baik aksesibilitasnya. Tetapi masih terdapat persentase yang sangat rendah jika dilihat tiap aspeknya yaitu pada toilet difabel dan urinoir.

Data-Driven Methodology for Coliving Spaces and Space Profiling Based on Post-Occupancy Evaluation through Digital Trail of Users

Sustainable spaces are those that are optimized, accessible, promote user experience and aim to reduce CO2 emissions while enhancing users’ well-being and comfort. The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology that was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand and improve the use of coliving spaces based on remote Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) analysis of the digital trail generated by the users. Applying the POE methodology based on data collection from IT infrastructure enabled to identify opportunities to improve the future design of human-centered spaces. The residential market, design-wise traditional for centuries, is now facing a high-speed adaptation to the changing needs, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis. New ways of living and shared spaces like Coliving are escalating. Technology is both an enabler of this shift in housing and the solution to operating and managing these new buildings. This paper demonstrates, through the case study of a Coliving space located in Madrid, Spain, the benefits of implementing data analysis of the digital trail collected from in-built IT systems such as smart locks, Wi-Fi networks and electric consumption devices. The conclusion is that analysing the available data from the digital infrastructure of coliving buildings can enable practitioners to improve the future design of residential spaces.