The findings illustrate how perceptions of comfort can be improved by increasing the degree of environmental control occupants have without necessarily increasing energy consumption. The paper highlights the significance of occupancy patterns to a complete understanding of energy efficiency and comfort, and speculates that the prediction and assessment of energy per occupant may have an important future role to play in bridging the gap between energy performance and comfort.

Maintaining comfort levels while reducing energy demand in buildings in the face of climate change is a key challenge in temperate zones. Creating transitional spaces and thermal variation in buildings may offer a way forward. This paper is a study of seasonal short-term thermal transitions in the lobby areas of three higher education buildings in Sheffield, UK involving 1,749 participants, thermal comfort questionnaires and simultaneous climatic measurements. New patterns of thermal transitions were identified, which significantly modified seasonal subject’s thermal perception, and their reactions to temperature changes. Results suggest that it could be possible to positively alter people’s thermal perception in the short and long term through the judicious use of lobby spaces. This could help to reverse the negative effects of air conditioning in people’s thermal perception and aid energy saving. This work also provides a reflection on the purpose of transitional spaces in historical buildings and how the implementation of HVAC technologies has reduced the environmental diversity and the key role that transitional spaces play in providing thermal comfort in contemporary architectural design

ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Key wordsPerformance evaluation, Thermal comfort, Thermal adaptation, Housing design, Industrialised building systems, Mexico Highlights¥ The thermal performance of a low-cost concrete house building system is analysed. ¥ Monitoring and a field survey are used to assess environmental performance. ¥ Thermal adaptation is easier for subjects in the cool season than the warm season. ¥ Poor performance is blamed on a ubiquitous design unsuited to the local climate. AbstractThis paper examines the performance of a case study of low-income housing situated in a warm-temperate climate (Morelia, Mexico). It represents the first comprehensive evaluation of thermal comfort in a widely used concrete formwork construction system in that country.The study was conducted in two seasons, determined by climatic analysis identifying the months that presented the most extreme conditions during the year. Indoor thermal conditions were monitored and are compared with the adaptive comfort temperature and comfort zone derived from existing standards.A thermal comfort field survey was also conducted, including the distribution of questionnaires in both seasons. The findings are compared with monitored data to assess the overall thermal performance of the housing typology.The results reveal poor thermal performance with houses falling significantly outside the thermal comfort boundaries in both periods due to a number of factors, including the properties of the building envelope, the impact of solar radiation, the number of occupants and their behavior. The results indicate that it is easier for subjects to adapt to cooler rather than warmer conditions. These findings expand existing knowledge of the performance of this concrete formwork system in Mexico as well as other industrialised building systems in similar climates. It demonstrates the urgency of designing viable solutions according to local climate, and questions the use of identical housing prototypes across different climatic regions.

This paper examines the performance of environmental strategies in seven recently constructed or refurbished university buildings in the UK. These buildings contain a range of administrative spaces, classrooms, libraries and studios, reflecting their often complex, multiuse, heterogeneous nature. The key features of each environmental strategy are described (including passive, mixed-mode or active systems), in the context of the occupants and spaces they serve and the level of interaction that they afford. Energy performance and occupant thermal comfort (assessed by user surveys) are analysed and compared with studies of other non-domestic buildings, which have typically focused on more predictable single administrative uses (e.g. government offices), and unusually effective operation scenarios (e.g. continuous monitoring by expert building managers). The paper concludes by examining two of the case studies that reflect an increasingly common model of ÔflexibleÕ environmental design in more detail, identifying key features of the strategies for each building that have had a significant impact on their performance. The design assumptions leading to these features will be explored, and key lessons identified, contributing towards the development of a more robust evidential basis for choosing appropriate environmental strategies for university and other non-domestic buildings in the UK.

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