The Indoor Environment Handbook How to Make Buildings Healthy and Comfortable

About this book

Ensuring that buildings are healthy and comfortable for their occupants is a primary concern of all architects and building engineers. This highly practical handbook will help make that process more efficient and effective.

It begins with a guide to how the body (and mind) react to different indoor environmental conditions, explaining the problems that can result from poor design, and indicating optimum (benchmark) responses. It then moves on to give a background to the development of the study and control of the indoor environment, examining the main design considerations (including temperature, light, ventilation and noise) and discussing the drivers for change in the field. The final section presents a newly developed 'top-down' or systemic approach, where meeting the wishes and demands of the occupants with a holistic strategy becomes the overriding priority.

The book is filled with useful facts, figures and analysis, and practical methods which designers who are keen to assess and improve the user experience of their buildings will find invaluable and can begin using straight away.

Contents

Why this Book?
How to Read This Book

Part I: Humans and the Indoor Environment
1. Health and Comfort & Indoor Environmental Control
2. Human Reception and Perception
3. The Indoor Environment

Part II: Health and Comfort in the Indoor Environment
4. Past, Present and Future of Health and Comfort in the Indoor Environment
5. Defining Health and Comfort in the Indoor Environment
6. Drivers of Health and Comfort in the Indoor Environment

Part III: Management of the Indoor Environment
7. An Interactive and Sustainable Approach
8. The Top Down Approach
9. The Individual Interactions

Summary and Conclusions
References
Symbols
Abbreviations

Annexes:
A. TOBUS
B. Sensory evaluation by the human nose
C. Current standards and regulations
D. Some attributes and factors

Customer Reviews

Biography

Philomena Bluyssen received her building engineering degree from the Technical University in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. From 1987 to 1990 she undertook her PhD at the Technical University of Denmark on the topic Indoor Air Quality. Since 1991 she has worked with TNO, were she has coordinated several European funded projects on indoor environment, including the recent European HealthyAir project.