The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is a key design goal to be achieved in building construction, since it strongly influences occupant¿s comfort, health, wellbeing and productivity. This ambition is especially relevant in public buildings, such as offices, schools, and libraries. Valuing the IEQ can be extremely challenging due to the involvement of psychological, physical and environmental factors. The "Post Occupancy Evaluation" (POE) is a "systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of design in the built environment from the occupants' point of view" (Preiser, 1995). Generally, POE denotes different methods of collecting and disseminating data on existing buildings that have been occupied for a certain period, and encompasses different research topics: air quality; thermal comfort; users' behaviours and influence on air temperature and humidity control; lighting and acoustic quality. POE methodologies are considered critical in order to guide and progress human-centred architecture. Goals, strategies, methodologies and tools for carrying out POE are focused on researches dealing with commonly used methods and tools, such as interviews, questionnaires, surveys, templates and focus groups. The evaluation approaches for indoor quality assessment follow three main strategies: the first one is aimed at measuring physical parameters related to indoor environments; the second one enquiries directly the users and their physical and psychological satisfaction; the third one tends to integrate the previous two. In Italy, the POE approach is still in a developing phase and has been applied mainly on public buildings. Among the various advantages offered, considering the relevant heritage building stock present in Italy, the POE represents a critical success factor in guiding practitioners and local administrators towards the correct assessment of most appropriate re-functioning of historical buildings.
Sustainability in buildings and cities, as it is understood and practiced today, is now being recognised as an inadequate measure for current and future building design, for it aims no higher than to make buildings "less bad". Alternatively a "Restorative" approach to the built environment has an enormous and unexplored potential to improve such impact (RESTORE, 2016).
Although the impacts call for the need of adequate technical actions, there is a broad range of qualitative perspectives that are poorly considered by the built environment and by European regulatory frames. As an example, while energy receives a great deal of focus in terms of building sustainability, it is estimated that today at least 10% of health care costs can be attributable to the impact of our built environment, resulting, for example from poor air quality, low levels of comfort, toxicity of building materials and a disconnection from the health benefits of biophilic design. The influence and impact of the built environment extends beyond the building. Post Occupancy Evaluation seeks to address the ecological and social impacts, upstream impacts from e.g. material sourcing, the impact of construction activity and the downstream influence of buildings to enable or restrict users' health and sustainability behaviors.
The proposed research aims at progressing the debate from an energy centric approach to a more holistic sustainability approach to also embrace health and socially just impacts, benefits as well as relationships with natural ecosystems. Thus, within the built environment sustainability agenda, the research project proposes to expand on a narrow focus on building energy performance, adaptation strategies and limiting of environmental impacts, moving towards a broader POE framework that regenerates places and enriches people, ecology, culture, and climate at the core of design, construction and operation activities, with a particular emphasis on concepts such as health and wellbeing, biophilia, and links to the natural ecosystem. The proposed research will specifically address the complexity of a broader range of quantitative and qualitative thinking throughout its actions, seeking opportunities and innovations that will enable multiscale ("scale jumping") thinking from the human microscale to the building/space mesoscale of city and ecosystem dimensions. The confrontation with a mixed network of researchers, built environment practitioners, green building consultants and agencies (i.e. the RESTORE network) will enable productive exchanges within this multi-scale thinking approach. The multidisciplinary innovative approach and its scientific, design based, effectiveness will be developed involving young doctoral students and more mature expertise drawn from environmental design, ecology, economy, sociology, planning, construction, human health and wellbeing.
Sapienza researchers will explore emerging challenges facing the built environment. Today, the "reduce / reuse / recycle" and "green building" paradigms, together with the limitation of environmental impacts and the enactment of adaptation strategies, only partially capture the drivers of the increasing design challenges. The climate change impact on and of the built environment, the provision of ecosystems services, the prioritization of human health and well-being, user-friendly building operation strategies, and the up-cycling of construction products are the next generation of design targets, and represent a radical shift from the energy-driven and carbon-centred notion of sustainability that, for many years, has been the exclusive remit of mechanical engineers and environmental consultants. Researchers are being called upon to fully embrace scientific advances that support new targets, expanding design scenarios and exploiting traditional and advanced POE processes, methods and tools to evaluate, test and provide feedback about innovative solutions that celebrate the richness of design creativity while providing comfort to users in harmony with the enrichment of urban and natural ecosystems.
Ultimately, the proposed research will contribute to the dissemination of the paradigm shift required to move from the energy-centric sustainability thinking to human and ecosystem-based sustainability; will improve the bases for national and international academic research within the field of Post Occupancy Valuation and evidence-based design; will describe to practitioners how to integrate the processes, methods, and tools for the implementation of Post Occupancy Evaluation; will contribute to the foundations of evidence-based design while negotiating through the constraints and opportunities of standards and regulations; will better equip educators and senior researchers to influence architecture doctoral students at the early stages of their professional career.