Get Sust! Issue 30

Will you tolerate this? POE of green buildings

Post-occupancy evaluation experts Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass wondered whether we’re willing to be a little bit more forgiving of the indoor environment if the building we’re in is classed as ‘green’, so they have reviewed POE data going back more than ten years.

Their tentative conclusion is that yes - users are more tolerant of green buildings. However, they stress that we must be extremely careful in interpreting the evidence - which they present in a current issue of the journal Building Research and Information.

For example, they found that ‘approval’ ratings scores for green buildings tend to be better than conventional buildings for more all-embracing, summary variables such as ‘comfort overall’ but if you delve deeper into people’s responses the picture is not so clear cut. For example, users tend to rate design, image, needs and health as much better in green buildings, but these also may disguise many detailed flaws.

Their study also found that some green buildings:

are repeating past mistakes by creating unneeded and wasteful complexity, which can undermine their whole purpose
can be more ‘fragile’ in their performance, so it is more important that everything works well together
can be unnecessarily complex because of features being added ‘downwind’ - which makes the building difficult to manage.

Overall, they found that smaller green buildings are often more successful than larger ones, and that even though a building aims to be ‘green’ that doesn’t mean users will be happier.

Learn more:

	•	Find out why by reading: Are users more tolerant of green buildings? by Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass, Building Research & Information, Volume 35, Issue 6 November 2007, p662; Routledge
	•	The November BRI is a special issue on ‘Next Generation Sustainable Construction’. Full contents list is at www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g781912074~tab=toc.