Abstract

Buildings typically are expected to provide their inhabitants with the opportunity to influence the indoor environment using various control devices. These include, for example, windows, luminaires, radiators, and shading elements. The quality and adequacy of the indoor environment is thus dependent on the availability and effectiveness of such devices. There is arguably a lack of generally agreed-upon evaluation procedures for this aspect of buildings’ indoor environment, namely its controllability by building users, or – in the terminology of Human Ecology – its “ecological valency”. In this context, the present contribution explores the possibility to specify buildings’ ecological valency in a systematic and reproducible manner. Toward this end, first appropriate theoretical foundations for this purpose are explored and previous related efforts are briefly reviewed. Subsequently, a specific approach toward an ecological valency evaluation method is presented. As part of this approach, five main categories of control devices are documented in various rooms of a building, including windows, shading, lights, heating and cooling systems. Whereas, the first part of this method deals with the basic availability of these control devices and elements, the second part looks at their spatial distribution, effectiveness (both objective and subjective), interface quality (to support user interaction), and ecological quality. The presented evaluation method is tested for six different rooms of an office area in an educational building in Vienna, Austria. Thirty participants independently evaluated this area based on the proposed method and associated protocol. The results point to high degree of congruence between the evaluation results of different participants while judging the principle availability and typology of the control devices. Higher variation was observed in the evaluation of the quality of devices and their interfaces. As a whole, the results suggest that methods similar to the one presented in this contribution may indeed provide an opportunity to extend building performance evaluation procedures beyond energy and cost criteria so as to cover aspects pertaining to user control and satisfaction.

摘要

建筑物通常应为其居民提供使用各种控制设备影响室内环境的机会。例如，这些包括窗户、灯具、散热器和遮阳元件。因此，室内环境的质量和充足性取决于此类设备的可用性和有效性。可以说，对于建筑物室内环境的这方面缺乏普遍认可的评估程序，即建筑物用户的可控性，或者——在人类生态学的术语中——它的“生态效价”。在这种情况下，本论文探讨了以系统和可重复的方式指定建筑物生态效价的可能性。为此，首先探讨了为此目的适当的理论基础，并简要回顾了以前的相关工作。随后，提出了一种生态效价评估方法的具体方法。作为这种方法的一部分，在建筑物的各个房间中记录了五种主要类别的控制设备，包括窗户、遮阳、灯光、加热和冷却系统。然而，该方法的第一部分涉及这些控制设备和元素的基本可用性，第二部分则着眼于它们的空间分布、有效性（客观和主观）、界面质量（支持用户交互）和生态质量。所提出的评估方法在奥地利维也纳一所教育建筑的办公区的六个不同房间进行了测试。30 名参与者根据所提出的方法和相关协议独立评估了该领域。结果表明，在判断控制装置的原理可用性和类型时，不同参与者的评估结果高度一致。在评估设备及其接口的质量时观察到更高的变化。总的来说，结果表明，与本贡献中提出的方法类似的方法确实可以提供一个机会，将建筑性能评估程序扩展到能源和成本标准之外，以涵盖与用户控制和满意度有关的方面。结果表明，在判断控制装置的原理可用性和类型时，不同参与者的评估结果高度一致。在评估设备及其接口的质量时观察到更高的变化。总的来说，结果表明，与本贡献中提出的方法类似的方法确实可以提供一个机会，将建筑性能评估程序扩展到能源和成本标准之外，以涵盖与用户控制和满意度有关的方面。结果表明，在判断控制装置的原理可用性和类型时，不同参与者的评估结果高度一致。在评估设备及其接口的质量时观察到更高的变化。总的来说，结果表明，与本贡献中提出的方法类似的方法确实可以提供一个机会，将建筑性能评估程序扩展到能源和成本标准之外，以涵盖与用户控制和满意度有关的方面。