Sustainable and Healthy Buildings

Abstract

Nowadays, awareness and understanding on health and well-being related to various built-environments has become a part of the responsibility of architectural designers and scientists. It was in this context that the Center for Sustainable Healthy Buildings (CSHeB) at Kyung Hee University has been nominated as an Engineering Research Center (ERC) of an Advanced Center of Excellence (ACE) by Korean Government in September of 2008. A total grant, approximately US $10 million for 7 years, has been provided by the government for the funding of CSHeB. The Center’s emphasis is based on creative research to ensure exploration of basic theory and knowledge that may lead to outstanding papers and the development of advanced technologies for sustainable building environment. The CSHeB has become one of the leading research organisations in the area concerning the built environment, emphasising the need for interdisciplinary research into architectural, medical, psychological, physiological, social, and environmental aspects of healthy buildings. Progress has been made in understanding the need for social integration, design, construction, maintenance, and occupants’ requirements for development of sustainable and healthy buildings. A number of reports and studies have been published providing the latest ‘‘state-of-the-art’’ dissemination of research relating to lighting, ventilation, social environment, indoor air quality, acoustics, thermal comfort, moisture, and structure for the built environment. The CSHeB has hosted the ‘‘2nd International Symposium on Sustainable Healthy Buildings’’ in Seoul, Korea on October 8, 2009. The symposium has highlighted the many creative research and engineering designs by the architectural scientists that will advance our missions for sustainable development from the residential to commercial scale, incorporating consideration of health performance, harmfulness caused, and energy efficiency. The 21 papers selected for publication for this special issue of Indoor and Built Environment were developed from articles initially presented at the Symposium. The main objective of the Special Issue is to publish high quality research papers that will contribute to debate and discussion on how healthy environment should be achieved within architecture to protect our natural resources and indoor environmental quality including medical aspects. This Special Issue is of interest to broad interdisciplinary readers including academics, practitioners, and consultants. The following provides the readers a brief guide to the papers included. P. Boyce presents a paper reviewing the impact of light on human health. J.T. Kim and J.A. Hoskins discuss the need for sensible assessment on the risk of asbestos materials used in Korean buildings. C. Yu, J.T. Kim, and J. Singh provide the survey requirements for environmental monitoring and investigation of sick buildings. C. Li, B. Deng and C.N. Kim examine a three-dimensional simulation method for reducing biological pollutants concentrations in a hospital isolation room by using UV light devices. H.J. Moon and Y.R. Yoon report the key factors identified by their questionnaire survey that could affect mould growth on interior surfaces in residential buildings.