Building characteristics associated with self-reported dry eyes and headaches of outpatient workers in hospital buildings

Building-related health symptoms are multifactorial, hence a comprehensive study is needed to identify associations of such symptoms with building aspects. Previous studies have identified certain building characteristics as risk factors for both dry eyes and headaches, which are among the most prevalent symptoms suffered by office workers....

Preferences for Indoor Environmental and Social Comfort of Outpatient Staff during the COVID-19 Pandemic, an Explanatory Study

While the pressure on hospital workers keeps growing, they are generally more dissatisfied with their comfort than other occupants in hospitals or offices. To better understand the comfort of outpatient workers in hospitals, clusters for preferences and perceptions of the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and social comfort were identified in a...

Workshop with 335 primary school children in The Netherlands: What is needed to improve the IEQ in their classrooms?

To identify current problems in the classroom and to conceptualize design solutions by primary school children to solve these problems, 335 children from seven primary schools participated in a workshop held in the Experience room of the SenseLab, comprising of two parts. In part 1, the children were asked to think about their own classroom...

Comfort at hospital reception desks

For several years indoor comfort is measured in halls of hospitals by architecture students from the Delft University of Technology. Questionnaires and interviews have shows that patients and visitors have very few complaints about the indoor comfort in hospital halls. This, in hindsight, is not so very surprising. Patients and visitors usually...

First SenseLab studies with primary school children: exposure to different environmental configurations in the experience room

To study the combined effect of different environmental factors on children in a classroom setting, 250 children from seven primary schools were exposed to 36 different environmental configurations (‘all’ and ‘fewer’ acoustical panels; ‘displacement’ and ‘mixing’ ventilation; sound type: ‘children talk’, ‘traffic’, and ‘none’; and ‘direct’, ...