The Need for a Paradigm Shift toward an Occupant-Centered Environmental Control Model

ABSTRACT

Office-based environmental control systems are centralized and designed to control entire spaces, ignoring use dynamics and requirements, and despite being regulated by standardized comfort models, they fail to satisfy real occupants, mainly due to their varied individual characteristics. This research is field-based with a quantitative approach and correlational design. Its objective is to empirically demonstrate that open-plan design, where different users share the same space and generalized environmental conditions, lacks a holistic view of IEQ criteria and the integration of other factors that affect health and well-being. Four buildings are chosen in different Chilean cities, measuring temperatures and CO2 levels at different desks, and applying a survey, which was designed as part of the research to analyze the estimation of relationships between variables and to reveal the factors that cause differences among occupants. The results show that people's satisfaction is multivariable and depends on other factors that positively or negatively stimulate their sensations and perceptions, such as, for example, the option to personally control their environmental conditions. Likewise, it is evident that to achieve comfort, health is being affected while in the building.