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Envelope as climate negotiator: evaluating adaptive building envelope's capacity to moderate indoor climate and energy

Description
Through manipulation of adaptable opportunities available within a given environment, individuals become active participants in managing personal comfort requirements, by exercising control over their comfort without the assistance of mechanical heating and cooling systems. Similarly, continuous manipulation of a building skin's form, insulation, porosity, and transmissivity qualities exerts control over…

Through manipulation of adaptable opportunities available within a given environment, individuals become active participants in managing personal comfort requirements, by exercising control over their comfort without the assistance of mechanical heating and cooling systems. Similarly, continuous manipulation of a building skin's form, insulation, porosity, and transmissivity qualities exerts control over the energy exchanged between indoor and outdoor environments. This research uses four adaptive response variables in a modified software algorithm to explore an adaptive building skin's potential in reacting to environmental stimuli with the purpose of minimizing energy use without sacrificing occupant comfort. Results illustrate that significant energy savings can be realized with adaptive envelopes over static building envelopes even under extreme summer and winter climate conditions; that the magnitude of these savings are dependent on climate and orientation; and that occupant thermal comfort can be improved consistently over comfort levels achieved by optimized static building envelopes. The resulting adaptive envelope's unique climate-specific behavior could inform designers in creating an intelligent kinetic aesthetic that helps facilitate adaptability and resiliency in architecture.
ContributorsErickson, James (Author) / Bryan, Harvey (Thesis advisor) / Addison, Marlin (Committee member) / Kroelinger, Michael D. (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Office design: an exploration of worker satisfaction and their perceptions of effective workspaces

Description
ABSTRACT Recent studies indicate that top-performing companies have higher-performing work environments than average companies. They receive higher scores for worker satisfaction with their overall physical work environment as well as higher effectiveness ratings for their workspaces (Gensler, 2008; Harter et al., 2003). While these studies indicate a relationship between effective…

ABSTRACT Recent studies indicate that top-performing companies have higher-performing work environments than average companies. They receive higher scores for worker satisfaction with their overall physical work environment as well as higher effectiveness ratings for their workspaces (Gensler, 2008; Harter et al., 2003). While these studies indicate a relationship between effective office design and satisfaction they have not explored which specific space types may contribute to workers' overall satisfaction with their physical work environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between workers' overall satisfaction with their physical work environments and their perception of the effectiveness of spaces designed for Conceptual Age work including learning, focusing, collaborating, and socializing tasks. This research is designed to identify which workspace types are related to workers' satisfaction with their overall work environment and which are perceived to be most and least effective. To accomplish this two primary and four secondary research questions were developed for this study. The first primary question considers overall workers' satisfaction with their overall physical work environments (offices, workstations, hallways, common areas, reception, waiting areas, etc.) related to the effective use of work mode workspaces (learning, focusing, collaborating, socializing). The second primary research question was developed to identify which of the four work mode space types had the greatest and least relationship to workers' satisfaction with the overall physical work environment. Secondary research questions were developed to address workers' perceptions of effectiveness of each space type. This research project used data from a previous study collected from 2007 to 2012. Responses were from all staff levels of US office-based office workers and resulted in a blind sample of approximately 48,000 respondents. The data for this study were developed from SPSS data reports that included descriptive data and Pearson correlations. Findings were developed from those statistics using coefficient of determination.
ContributorsHarmon-Vaughan, Elizabeth (Author) / Kroelinger, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Bernardi, Jose (Committee member) / Ozel, Filiz (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013