Abstract
Despite material and technological innovations fueling sustainable design, green building certification programs are often employed exclusively for expensive, high-publicity projects. Because COVID-19 has shifted the importance of constructing healthy, productive workspaces in schools and offices to personal dwellings, building sciences industries must respond to this increased need for safe, indoor environments. While conducting post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) can be valuable ways for teams to understand quantitative and qualitative data in such spaces to inform immediate repairs, renovation efficacies, and future projects, barriers to successful implementation have been documented. Since the majority of POEs have been developed in-house and employed internally for projects within firms, these feedback opportunities are not standardized across the field, and results are not widely shared beyond academia. Many of these assessments are conducted at the behest of wealthy clientele, indicating that POEs do not accurately reflect concerns of those in low-income, underprivileged communities. Few studies have emphasized the building operations and user experiences of those in spaces with a myriad of long-term inhabitants, including apartment complexes and homeless shelters. It is becoming increasingly imperative to develop POEs that are openly accessible, feature easy implementation, and are low-cost to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within the built environment. Additional modifications to conventional POE paradigms, such as enhancing transparency of POE findings, can greatly benefit structural engineers, research and design scientists, policymakers, and affordable housing organizations. Through chronicling advantages and disadvantages of POEs, this session synthesizes current understandings and recommends avenues for further POE research and application.
Presenters
Jaya AlagarStudent, Department of Chemistry; Department of Art History, Williams College, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Social Impact, Social Impact Analyses, Housing, Public Construction, Human Habitats
