Abstract:The issue of sustainability has become one of the major concerns among architectural professionals throughout the world. As a way of providing information, many countries have developed and distributed sustainable building guidelines. This paper aims to investigate architectural professionals' needs and preferences with regard to sustainable building guidelines in Korea, with a specific focus on various guideline attributes. We conducted a review of existing sustainable building guidelines in many countries and undertook a questionnaire survey among professionals in Korea to gain insight about their opinions. Forty guidelines were examined and characterized by their attributes, including main purpose, target building type, communication format, hierarchy of the information, and information type. As the main purposes of guidelines, professionals identified "to provide education on the significance of sustainable buildings and promote a better understanding of sustainable principles" and "to provide comprehensive and detailed information on sustainable building design strategies and technologies". Cost, financial information, as well as comprehensive implementation methods were found to be crucial information types for professionals.

With growing awareness of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, much effort has been made to achieve “sustainability” in the building sector. Across the globe, many architects and building owners are striving to realize mandatory or voluntary building certification, in order to affirm the environmental performance of their buildings. Various sustainable design strategies and green building technologies have been adopted to improve buildings’ environmental performance as well as to achieve higher levels of certification. These technologies and strategies could affect building occupants’ satisfaction as well as productivity. This paper presents the results of post occupancy evaluation (POE) surveys to investigate occupants’ awareness of various green building technologies and their satisfaction levels and causes of dissatisfaction for selected technologies. A questionnaire survey was conducted for an office building in Korea that had received the highest grades in rating and certification systems. Some technologies showed higher levels of awareness and satisfaction, but there were also a few technologies with lower levels of satisfaction than we had expected. If these technologies are applied to buildings in the future, after improvisation or modification based on the POE results, it could serve as an effective strategy to increase people’s satisfaction as well as improve environmental performance.