Indoor AIr Quality: Insights for Designing Energy Efficient Buildings

Indoor air quality has become an issue of increasing concern. The causes were mainly associated with some energy conservation measures, particularly reductions in ventilation levels, originated by the oil crisis of the 70's meanwhile, the real causes for indoor air pollution have been identified and great scientific and technical progress towards a better knowledge of the scientific basis of indoor air quality has been accomplished in recent years. At the European Community level, among others, the activities developed since 1986 under the Community Concerted Action “Indoor Air Quality and its impact on Man” and, more recently, also in the JOULE project “European Audit Project to Optimise Indoor Air Quality and Energy Consumption in Office Buildings” have given a major contribution for the enhancement and transfer of that knowledge towards the practitioners. At the CEN level, the work carried out by TCI56 while preparing the European Standard "Ventilation for Buildings: Design Criteria for the Indoor Environment" also reprgiseflis a deeiitve eentfibuti§n In the sapie direction: to have, healthy, eopifortafela, and energy efficient buildings with flexible requirements according to the objec0tives of type of building or part of building. On the other hand, the European Community has been very much committed to promoting the use of solar energy in buildings, namely under the JOULE programme, mainly through a better characterisation of the climate, the development of passive solar technologies, the relationship between architecture and buildings physics, the development of codes and design tools and the implementation of actions of information and transfer of technology from the scientific world towards the design professions. The purpose of this presentation is precisely to highlight the aspects from the IAQ problematic that must be kept continuously in mind when approaching the energy efficiency issue in all types of buildings, in particular when designing energy efficient buildings that take into account passive and natural technologies where the consideration of IAQ is not yet current practice.