Comfort and well-being in solar buildings - Results from a European Audit

Within the European research project HOPE, 97 apartment buildings and 67 office buildings - a large part of which designed to be energy-efficient - were investigated using checklists regarding building characteristics and guestionnaires addressed to the occupants regarding their perceived comfort (thermal visual, acoustic and indoor air quality) and well-being (sick building syn- drome and allergies). lnterpretation of the collected data already showed that, on the average, oc- cupants of low energy buildings feel better and are better satisfied with their indoor environment than occupants of other buildings. This contribution addresses in particular those buildings that have one or more characteristics of passive solar architecture and give statistical comparisons be- tween the well-being as perceived by the occupants of these buildings and of the others. lt is found that, among all the buildings audited within the HOPE project, most solar buildings are in the top group for energy performance and are at least as healthy and comfortable as the other ones.