Selection of construction solutions and materials to optimize the indoor environmental quality of buildings

Abstract

To achieve an adequate quality of buildings it is necessary to consider a set of aspects that are interconnected and influence each other, not always in a favourable way. The selection of the most suitable construction solution and materials for the building elements must consider its contribution for the thermal and acoustic comfort, the daylight conditions and the indoor air quality inside the buildings, its energy efficiency, but also the weight of the solution and its effect on the structural project of the building. The solutions adopted in buildings, usually, only optimize no more than one of the necessary comfort requirements. In many cases, the best solutions to accomplish different comfort requirements are not compatible, especially in what concerns natural ventilation and lighting strategies and the acoustic and thermal performance. Thus, it is necessary to provide designers with methodologies with an integrated approach, that allow them to take into account, since an early stage of the design phase, all of the, sometimes incompatible, comfort requirements, to ensure the best overall behaviour of the buildings. In this work the use of a multi-criteria analysis, to balance all these aspects on the design phase, in order to assist the designer in the selection of construction solutions and materials will be presented. The criteria selected are related to the most important characteristics of the indoor environmental quality, the thermal and acoustic comfort, it is possible to define them in an early stage of the design phase, in a non subjective way, are under the designer scope and are the issues that are also the most valued by the users of the buildings.