The provision and maintenance of human comfort has been a primary goal of building design. Various systems of ventilation and space conditioning control are in use today aiming to meet these requirements of indoor environmental quality. The recent past, however, has seen growing environmental issues, which have raised concerns about the levels of energy used by some of these practices. The necessity of using increasing amounts of energy to provide high performance environments is hereby questioned. These include concerns for well-being, beyond physical comfort, including overall satisfaction and all-round health. This chapter presents explorations examining the different environmental alternatives in use today and their effectiveness to deliver quality indoor environments. These studies carried out at the Martin Centre, University of Cambridge, put forth a case for low energy sustainable design to provide for improved well-being.
Trends in Environmental ControlRecent years have seen a growing interest in the quality of the indoor environment. Scientifi c studies have determined various comfort and health effects to be associated with characteristics of buildings and the indoor environment [ 1 ] , and people
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