Get Sust! Issue 26

Are you sitting comfortably?

Last month 50 experts on comfort conditions in buildings gathered at London Metropolitan University’s (LMU) School of Architecture to hear the results of the EC Intelligent Energy project entitled “European high quality low energy buildings” (EULEB). Their discussions ranged from wondering whether occupants are more tolerant of ‘green’ buildings, to whether the idea of a ‘zero carbon’ building is an unhelpful distraction. Fergus Nicol sent Get Sust this report...

Prof. Mike Wilson, director of LMU’s Low Energy Architecture Research Unit (LEARN) explained that the EULEB project studied some 25 European public buildings, looking at both their energy use and occupant satisfaction, comparing predicted data with what people experienced once the buildings were occupied. Full details of the study have been published in CD format, including video clips of the buildings (see Learn more, below).

A most thought-provoking presentation was given Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies. He asked the question: “Are building users more tolerant of 'green' buildings?” As you might expect the answer was far from straightforward. Yes green buildings are generally better, but why? And do they appear better because other ‘non-green’ buildings are so bad? Is the key issue the green-ness of the design, or that green buildings tend to have motivated occupants and/or building managers?

Leaman said that there are areas where ‘green’ buildings are less good: they more likely to get hot in summer and cold in winter. But overall people seem more ready to be more “forgiving” of green buildings. This may be because green buildings tend to have things like shallower plans, more user controls, views out and so on, which occupants like anyway, and so they are more likely to put up with any chronic faults. This can induce a ‘virtuous circle’ where liked features re-enforce each other.

The more people understand design intent, says Leaman, the more they are likely to be tolerant of the building - and this applies to ‘ordinary’ users as well as users with vested interests. Rather than misuse this toleration to hide bad buildings behind a green front (and probably be ‘found out’ anyway) this does mean that designers of ‘green’ buildings need to spend more time on making things work and making sure the occupants know how they work when they take charge of the building.

Finally engineer Max Fordham was asked: “Are office buildings getting more energy efficient?” True to form, Max’s reply was “My short answer to this question is yes. But actually the question involves a historical perspective and a proper answer is probably no”!

Other noteworthy contributions from the event include:

“Even ‘accurate’ predictions can be thoroughly misleading. We need a good body of simple statistics based on our energy bills, as requested by the European directive. Waiting until a building has been in use for a few years is no good in helping with its design.”
“The range of energy use is a factor of six from the minimum to the maximum for a building.”
“The notion of the zero carbon building is facile and damaging. Does it really mean that a person metabolising 150W (that is 1200 kWh/yr) representing 0.25 tonnes of CO2 per year needs to have their own personal wind turbines, PV panel, or allotment garden? Renewable energy is going to be an essential commodity not simply some 10 per cent add-on to serious building projects.”

Learn more:

	•	The event was organised jointly by the UK International Solar Energy Society (UKISES) www.uk-ises.org and the Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings (NCEUB) http://nceub.org.uk/.
	•	The presentations and papers from this meeting will be posted on the LEARN website: www.learn.londonmet.ac.uk.
	•	More information on EULEB is available at <www.learn.londonmet.ac.uk/portfolio/2005-2009/euleb.shtml.
	•	Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies: www.usablebuildings.co.uk.
	•	Max Fordham www.maxfordham.co.uk.
	•	Professor Fergus Nicol is a member of the LEARN team at London Metropolitan University.