A comparison of the performance of sustainable buildings with conventional buildings from the point of view of the users

Abstract

The authors’ aim was to determine whether users perceived sustainable buildings to be performing differently from conventional buildings. To do so, they surveyed and analysed users’ perceptions of 45 factors related to operational, environmental, personal control and satisfaction aspects of two sets of buildings: a worldwide set of 31, selected on the basis of their sustainability credentials, and a set of 109 conventional selected from a larger database of commercial and institutional buildings. The user perception scores for each factor were summarized and compared for the two sets of buildings. It was found that the sustainable buildings performed very much better than the conventional buildings in terms of operational and satisfaction factors. In terms of environmental factors, modest improvements were found in thermal conditions and lighting, but little difference in noise, whereas personal control was largely unchanged. Some common features of the sustainable buildings are identified.

Keywords:

• Sustainable buildings
• building users
• post-occupancy evaluation
• building performance assessment
• users’ perceptions

Acknowledgements

Our particular thanks must go to all the building users who responded to the questionnaire, the building owners who facilitated the surveys, and the designers and building managers who gave so freely of their time. Thanks too to all our collaborators who joined with us to survey particular buildings and the many research assistants who worked on the data analysis.