POST OCCUPANCY EVALUATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COMFORT BETWEEN GREEN MARK BUILDING AND NON-GREEN MARK BUILDING

Abstract

Following the rising attention towards environmental issues of global warming, the design of green buildings becomes a prevalent trend throughout the world. Singapore aims to be sustainable and green. As such, the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore has established the Green Mark scheme in place for ten years and has been actively accrediting its buildings and greening the built environment overtime. Green buildings are widely assumed to be more comfortable than conventional ones. However, studies have shown that this may not be always true. In addition, sustainable assessment tools may non-holistic, resulting in building performance discrepancies. Thus, evaluation on these green buildings becomes critical. Previous studies and evaluations on green buildings provided insights on occupants’ perceptions and expectations for comfort. However, they are usually focused on the study of office or residential typologies, instead of more institutional domains such as the campus learning environment. Thus, this dissertation focuses on the post occupancy evaluation of two learning spaces in the National University of Singapore, namely Education Resource Centre, a Green Mark Platinum building and Yusof Ishak House, a non-Green Mark accredited building. Through conducting surveys on the occupants and making physical observations of the design, the comfort of these spaces will be examined and compared.