Environmental preferences of occupants: A multi-domain approach in the Swiss open office case study

Abstract

Defining indoor environmental conditions that meet the needs and preferences of occupants in open space offices can be challenging since the same space might be occupied by people with different individual needs and preferences regarding what constitutes a comfortable work environment. This study presents outcomes of a set of longitudinal point-in-time comfort surveys that were designed to capture instantaneous preference votes about momentary environmental conditions twice a day covering all four major domains of IEQ. The surveys were disseminated during two weeks across three seasons (fall, winter, summer) to 31 occupants in a Swiss open space office and supplemented with environmental data simultaneously measured in-situ at the occupant's desk level. These surveys (up to 670 responses per environmental domain) offered insights into the discrepancies of expressed environmental preferences with respect to measured environmental conditions in open space offices.