AN EVALUATION OF INDOOR THERMAL COMFORT IN HISTORICAL MUSEUM BUILDINGS

Abstract

Museums serve important functions in society, preserving history and culture for education and enjoyment. While the importance of protecting the museum collection cannot be undermined, visitors’ thermal comfort needs to be addressed as well for the benefit of arts attendance. Visitorship is of essence not only for the museum’s business sustainability but also for the government’s ambitions to transform Singapore into an outstanding cultural capital, as devised in the Renaissance City Plan. The study aims to investigate the relationship between artwork preservation and visitors’ thermal comfort in historic buildings adaptively reused as museums. It does so through a field study carried out in the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. Data was collected for three months from April to June 2022 through a thermal monitoring programme for both indoor and outdoor environment, as well as a visitor survey questionnaire. Findings reveal that the thermal environment was within both museum technical guidelines and thermal comfort standards, demonstrating the historical museum’s ability to balance artwork preservation with visitors’ thermal comfort. However, thermal acceptability could be improved with enhanced cooling. Acceptable temperature limits were developed according to an adaptive model alongside recommendations for passive cooling design strategies to improve the environment for visitors’ comfort. However, the application of this study’s findings is limited by its short data collection period, incomprehensive quantitative measurements, and singular case study scope. Future works may be conducted in more museums of different typology to expand the limited applicability of this research, as well as to test out the acceptable temperature limits established.