Projects

Dissertation 2020-21 Title: 
General perception of indoor environmental factors on people’s health, well-being and productivity and the impact of biophilia in indoor office spaces.

I did my dissertation during the pandemic of 2020 and all the research done was online through the use of surveys. To gather more data, I translated the survey into Spanish, English and Italian. I had 131 responses. Due to the lack of paper studies about the perception of indoor office environments; benchmarks, guidelines and frameworks were taken as a based of study for the simulation. The hypothetical simulation of an indoor office environment was modelled and designed for the online survey. In which a 4 open spaces designs were added for people to choose which one had the perception to be more comfortable for the well-being, health and productivity.  Followed by a set of  questions about the  indoor greenery perception in relationship to the Indoor Environmental Factors. 

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According to the World Health Organization, the definition of health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO, Constitution, 2020). Several studies demonstrates how health and well being satisfaction is correlated to indoor environments factors such as thermal, lightning, noise and indoor air quality (Bluyssen, Janssen, van den Brink and de Kluizenaar, 2011), (Mansor and Sheau-Ting, 2020) (Richarson et all, 2005). Bluyssen P. (2009) (Skov, Valbjørn and DISG, 1987). As as as approximately 90% of people spend time in indoor environments and this percentage includes indoor office environments (Al horr, et all. 2016).

Indoor environmental factors are important topics to discuss and analysis because it can affects people health, wellbeing and productivity for years. Some terminology related to indoor environmental factors for instance: Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) have a lack of knowledge among people working in indoor office environments. Therefore, if people had knowledge about the some SBS symptoms while working in a particular indoor built space, workers could notified that maybe the indoor built environment might be causing: cough, red eyes or anxiety. The issues is that these symptoms can be mistaken for a cold, flu or feeling under the weather. Solution  are including indoor greenery and biophilia in indoor office environments can add many benefits not only to people but also to the company annual cost. It is a non expensicve way to improve the air quality, cool down the building during summer and reduce energy consumption and CO2 emmisions.

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Creating satisfactory and comfortable indoor environments spaces that move towards green buildings can establish better understanding of occupants health, well being and productivity comfort. Indoor environmental factors can affect people perception in different ways do to past or none, experiences, demographics, traditional, gender and age (WBDG - Whole Building Design Guide, 2020), (Raanaas et al., (2011) (Burge, 2004). BREEAM and LEED are green rating tools used as a guideline to create some parts of the online survey (World Green Building Council, 2020), this will help to investigate if what people perceive correlated to the standards and frameworks. Lastly, Biophilia and indoor greenery are the main term use in this thesis, and both can many benefits for indoor office environments from cooling indoor spaces to enhance health and well-being (Dravigne, et all,. 2008), (Smith, Fsadni and Holt, 2017), (Gilchrist, et. All 2015), (Deng and Deng , 2018), (BREEAM, 2021).

Therefore, this study aimed to research about ‘General perception of indoor environmental factors on people’s health, well-being and productivity and the impact of biophilia in indoor office spaces’. 

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