This note was reviewed and approved for currency in September 2018.
Users of a range of commercial and institutional buildings in eleven countries have been surveyed to understand their perceptions of the performance of a range of factors – operational, environmental, personal control, and satisfaction with the latter including health. All the buildings in question have received national awards for sustainable design or have scored well in terms of their respective country’s building sustainability rating tool. This paper focuses on how the users perceived these buildings to be affecting their health, both in terms of their qualitative rating of that effect and their written comments on that aspect of the study.
Based on respondents’ ratings (or scores) of the health and productivity perceptions it was found that, on average, these ‘sustainable’ buildings were perceived to be healthier than a data-set of ‘conventional’ buildings. A very strong correlation was found between health and productivity and interesting correlations were found between the respondents’ scores and their comments.