The need for occupant-related and building-related indicators in our guidelines for indoor environmental quality

Research has shown that, even though the indoor environmental conditions seem to comply with current guidelines and those conditions seem ‘comfortable’ enough, staying indoors is not good for our health. Reasons for this discrepancy might be the fact that these guidelines are based on single-dose response relationships to prevent negative...

Advancement on Thermal Comfort in Educational Buildings: Current Issues and Way Forward

The thermal environment in educational buildings is crucial to improve students’ health and productivity, as they spend a considerable amount of time in classrooms. Due to the complexity of educational buildings, research performed has been heterogeneous and standards for thermal comfort are based on office studies with adults. Moreover, they...

Test rooms to study human comfort in buildings: A review of controlled experiments and facilities

Occupants’ comfort perception affects building energy consumptions. To improve the understanding of human comfort, which is crucial to reduce energy demand, laboratory experiments with humans in controlled environments (test rooms) are fundamental, but their potential also depends on the characteristic of each research facility. Nowadays, there...

Energy consumption, self-reported teachers’ actions and children's perceived indoor environmental quality of nine primary school buildings in the Netherlands

Literature shows that both building systems and occupants’ behaviour contribute to the amount of energy used to create a comfortable indoor environment. To determine possible relationships, energy consumption of nine school buildings was studied in relation to identified building characteristics, self-reported frequency of teachers’ actions, and...

Clustering of office workers from the OFFICAIR study in The Netherlands based on their self-reported health and comfort

The growing field of indoor health and comfort studies recently shifted from predicting the average comfort and wellbeing of a large population into identifying the needs of individuals in different scenarios. This study aimed to identify different profiles of office workers in the Netherlands who took part in the OFFICAIR study, based on their...

Ten questions concerning well-being in the built environment

Well-being in the built environment is a topic that features frequently in building standards and certification schemes, in scholarly articles and in the general press. However, despite this surge in attention, there are still many questions on how to effectively design, measure, and nurture well-being in the built environment. Bringing together...

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...

Profiling outpatient staff based on their self-reported comfort and preferences of indoor environmental quality and social comfort in six hospitals

Comfort and health of outpatient staff is important due to the growing demand of healthcare and its crucial influence on society. Previous studies have mostly focused on the perception of comfort and indicated a large prevalence of building-related symptoms and dissatisfaction with comfort of staff in hospital buildings. Unfortunately,...

Clustering of Dutch school children based on their preferences and needs of the IEQ in classrooms

Background: It is well-known that indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in classrooms can have an effect on school children's comfort, health and performance. Unfortunately, information about the school children's perception of IEQ factors in their classrooms is still insufficient. The objective of this study was to better understand school...

Making a home out of a temporary dwelling: a literature review and building transformation case studies

Temporary transformations of vacant buildings could alleviate the shortage of housing for urgent home seekers. However, not much is known about the transformation of buildings into temporary, adequate, and affordable housing. A multidisciplinary literature review covering design, indoor environmental quality, housing, and environmental...

A review of green systems within the indoor environment

This paper reviews the state of art of vegetation systems and their effect on the indoor environmental quality (IEQ), based on scientific studies from the past 30 years. Some studies have shown that biophilic workspaces and interaction with plants may change human attitudes, behaviours, improve productivity and the overall well-being....

The creation of SenseLab: a laboratory for testing and experiencing single and combinations of indoor environmental conditions

Research has shown that staying indoors is not good for our health. People spend more and more of their time indoors. Therefore, providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment is very important. The SenseLab will contribute to the understanding of and coping with the indoor environment. Students, teachers, researchers, but also the...