Rethinking Post-occupancy Evaluation for Sustainable Learning Environments

Abstract

Green or sustainable schools are an important building type from which to explore questions of changing social behaviors and the often overlooked social dimensions of sustainable development such as equity and inclusion. Building performance studies, including post-occupancy evaluations (POE) are increasingly taking into account behavioral and social dimensions of the build environment, as well as the more common objectives of reductions in energy efficiency, and adopting ethnographic and art-based research methodologies to examine building users’ interaction with their environments. In this paper we examine contemporary evaluation methods in the context of school buildings to explore how some popular POE approaches imply only superficial objectives for green building. The need to create new habits of living and the role of the built environment in this task goes without question; but confronting scientific methods and engineering perspectives typical within the industry, meets professional barriers. In order to improve commonly adopted POE methods in the context of sustainable building, it is important that we are able to contest the meaning of sustainable design and include evaluation tools that have radical educational and transformative objectives, in particular those that allow communities to explore futures that demand both social and technical change. This paper suggests that through user feedback, architects and other building professionals have not only important tools to improve the performance of sustainable buildings, but also to confront the limited expectations of architects and engage users in a sustainable future. POE tools are educational and in listening to users, co-researching ways to transform environments, architects can transform their approaches to sustainable design.