Griet Verbeeck

Comfort in the Indoor Environment: A Theoretical Framework Linking Energy Efficiency and Universal Design

Energy Efficiency (EE) and Universal Design (UD) are topics high on governmental policy and research agendas which have been considered separately both in research and practice. This research hypothesizes that comfort can be a conceptual link that can represent both EE and UD features. In order to understand the broader meaning of comfort at home from the perspective of inhabitants in the context of home renovations, and to test our hypothesis, we conducted 3 qualitative studies with different user groups. The results confirm that users associate with comfort all aspects related to EE as well as with most aspects in UD. In addition, results indicate that EE can be an integral part of UD if both are considered from a comfort point of view. These are presented in a theoretical framework for comfort that can be used to further study a potential integration of the EE and UD fields.

The application of two sustainability assessment tools on a passive office in Flanders: a user-approach

During the last decade, a large number of building sustainability assessment tools have been developed, with the aim of determining the sustainability level of buildings through a range of evaluation themes and criteria. As these tools are meant to contribute to the sustainability of building design, insights in the usability of these tools in practice is required. Therefore, we compared two frequently used sustainability assessment tools in Flanders, namely BREEAM-NL Building in Use for existing offices and Assessment of Office Buildings, on their degree of user-friendliness and applicability in a post-construction assessment. In this research paper, the outcome of this comparison is discussed. In general, the user-friendliness and applicability turned out to be quite good. However, the time and labour input needed might be a substantial threshold for new users. Further research will be done in the near future on the user-friendliness and applicability of such tools along the design process.