Necessary Conditions for Multi-Domain Indoor Environmental Quality Standards

Ardeshir Mahdavi, Christiane Berger, Veselina Bochukova, Leonidas Bourikas, Runa T. Hellwig, Quan Jin, Anna Laura Pisello and Marcel Schweiker
Additional contact information
Ardeshir Mahdavi: Department of Building Physics and Building Ecology, TU Wien, 1040 Vienna, Austria
Christiane Berger: Department of Building Physics and Building Ecology, TU Wien, 1040 Vienna, Austria
Veselina Bochukova: Department of Building Physics and Building Ecology, TU Wien, 1040 Vienna, Austria
Leonidas Bourikas: Imagination Lancaster, School of Architecture, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YW, UK
Runa T. Hellwig: Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology CREATE, Aalborg University, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
Quan Jin: Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
Anna Laura Pisello: Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, 06125 Perugia, Italy
Marcel Schweiker: Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-24

Abstract: A discussion of sustainability in architecture cannot be meaningfully carried out without the inclusion of most buildings’ central purpose, namely the provision of indoor environments that are accommodating of occupants’ needs and requirements. To this end, building designers and operators are expected to demonstrate compliance with codes and standards pertaining to indoor environmental quality (IEQ). However, the majority of conventional IEQ standards, codes, and guidelines have a single-domain character, in that they address IEQ in terms of a number of isolated domains (i.e., thermal, visual, acoustic, air quality). In this context, the present contribution explores the current state of multi-domain IEQ evaluation approaches and the necessary conditions for their further development and application. Toward this end, a number of common building rating schemes were selected and analyzed in detail. The results of this assessment imply the necessity of both short-term improvements of the existing schemes in terms of the transparency and plausibility of the applied point allocation and weighting strategies and the fundamental need for a deeper empirically grounded understanding of the nature of occupants’ perception of and behavior in the built environments.

Keywords: indoor environmental quality; codes; standards; multi-domain; human factor; architecture; building; sustainability rating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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