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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine and show why post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of public apartment buildings in Ghana as a product of design is important. Design/methodology/approach – By design the paper is descriptive. It uses a literature review as a method to summarize, synthesize and show the gaps in the existing knowledge on public apartment buildings in general and Ghana in particular. These arguments are brought together in a conceptual framework for approaching POE studies. Findings – This paper finds that gaps exist in the existing POE research knowledge regarding public apartment buildings in Ghana not only as residential settings but also as designed artifacts intended for use. Research limitations/implications – There is a need for scientific research which focus on the design and use of public apartment buildings in Ghana to provide empirical basis for design, policy and research decision-making. Social implications – This paper shows that occupants’ feedback information is important, as it can benefits government, designers and builders, building regulators and managers, as well as end users. Originality/value – The paper contributes a conceptual framework based on which POE studies can be designed.

Many low income households are supported by Home Based Enterprises (HBE) for their income generation. However the settlements in coastal areas have physical problems related to the corrosive land and climate condition, as well as the possibilities of natural hazards such as flooding (ADB, 2003 : UNHABITAT 2003). The rapid growths of cities especially in developing countries (DCs) contribute to social problems, serious burdens for human health and the environment. In order to improve the quality of human life in the coastal cities, some local government decided to remove some settlements to the inland area such as problems in some big coastal cities in Indonesia. In many cases, many resettlements of housing failed to meet community's and user's requirements. To reduce and avoid sustainability problems, it is necessary to have more insight and understanding of the used of space in coastal low income housing. This paper describes the use of communal spaces for daily activities which are indicating the lack of space available in coastal settlements in order to accomodate user's needs.

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Technology has been an obvious solution to the increasing complexity of the built environment. As the number and specifi city of use requirements increases, designers, clients and managers tend to segment the overall problem to manageable aspects only tentatively linked to each other. As a result, aspects such as ventilation and lighting tend to rely more on mechanical means than on the affordances of the overall design. Ironically this increases the complexity and opacity of the built environment probably to a greater extent than rules, regulations and requirements. The paper presents a review of available computational methods and techniques that aim at a more coherent approach by supporting integration of (day)lighting into architectural designing. It proposes that the two main courses of further action are the improvement and updating building regulations, and the combination of quantitative knowledge of good, existing daylight designs with advanced simulation-based analyses of early design proposals. Improvements in daylighting design and the integration of daylighting in design solutions depend primarily on design guidance based on the coordinated development and thorough understanding of usable measures such as the Daylight Factor, the Daylight Performance Index and function factors. A major prerequisite to both simulation and design guidance are robust and detailed geometrical 3D models that accommodate both the input and the output of design actions and transactions.