Contribution of space factors to decisions on comfort of healthy building design

Abstract

Healthy buildings are closely related to human health and comfort. Based on the literature survey, this paper explores the definition of comfort in healthy buildings. Through literature analysis and expert interviews, 16 building space factors affecting building indoor environment were identified. To introduce the building space factors into the research on the comfort evaluation of healthy buildings, 152 questionnaires were sent out and the relationship between these factors and building indoor environment comfort evaluation and their rankings were discussed. Data analysis includes the reliability analysis, normal distribution test, Pearson correlation coefficient and MANOVA. The results have shown that the perceived comfort is strongly influenced by the building space factors, and the relationship is complicated. The rankings from professionals and non-professionals were different. Several factors have been identified as key influencing factors. Besides, the perceived comfort is also related to other factors such as age, gender, etc. Such discovery primarily provides an ordering of building space design factors, which will contribute to the buildings’ health, comfort and sustainable development through architectural design from an architect’s perspective.