Designing Buildings for People
With a trend towards greater building automation, occupant needs and preferences during the design process are often forgotten. Occupants are often distrusted because of their seemingly irrational behaviors, whereas they merely want to restore comfort. This webinar will focus on designing and operating buildings to optimize occupant comfort, building usability, and energy performance, based on the findings of post-occupancy evaluations from several hundred offices and apartments. There will be examples of interactions between occupants and building envelopes. We will provide humorous anecdotes, strange findings, and some general lessons learned and future recommendations.
Presenter:
Liam O'Brien, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Liam O’Brien, Ph.D., P.Eng. is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is the principal investigator of the Human Building Interaction Lab, which consists of a team of 15 researchers with diverse backgrounds in engineering, architecture, and psychology. His team is developing occupant-centric design processes, building code, and controls for high-performance buildings. He has authored over 150 publications and two books on this topic. He is the Operating Agent of International Energy Agency EBC Annex 79: Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation.