The Impact of Certification Systems for Architectural Solutions in Green Office Buildings in the Perspective of Occupant Well-Being

Magdalena Grzegorzewska,Paweł Kirschke

doi:10.3390/buildings11120659

Magdalena Grzegorzewska, Paweł Kirschke

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11120659

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Abstract

The green building certification system has long-lasting benefits by improving building efficiency and sustainability. The ultimate goal of such classification is to promote the preservation of the global environment as well as the occupants’ well-being and their health. In this paper, we present examples of buildings that have been designed and built in Poland and have been certified with BREEAM, LEED and WELL. Our study investigates human factors in certification systems and examines the WELL Building Standard as a supplement to other green systems, which will probably be the most popular in the future. The green building movement should prioritize pro-human factors and the associated environmental beliefs to improve indoor environment quality for users’ needs. We present this matter on the example of the Polish office space market, providing statistics and analyzing the architecture of six certified office buildings from Warsaw, Poznań and Wrocław. They are a representative sample of buildings designed following the certification regime. It was demonstrated how this aids in improving work comfort, enhances the program of office spaces and the organization of service spaces within buildings, which increases the rank of this architecture and positively affects the urban environment.

Highlights

City centers are filled with office buildings of various types: mixed-use, corporate, coworking, those that belong to banks or those that are occupied by administrative institutions
The dynamic of qualitative and quantitative change concerning office buildings, as well as the essence and mechanism of pro-environmental building certification, in which improving workplace environment optimization and standards are the main axis of analyses presented in this paper. We present this matter on the example of the Polish office space market, providing national statistics and describing a representative sample of buildings from Warsaw, Poznanand Wrocław, which have BREEAM [Appendix B], LEED [Appendix A] and/or WELL [Appendix C] certificates
The criteria [Table 3] that were investigated in the six office buildings selected were defined based on a review of the literature, the findings of studies Building the Business case: Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Green Offices by World Green Building Council (WGBC) [75], an analysis of design solutions and, most importantly, interviews with designers and specialists in office building certification

Summary

Introduction

City centers are filled with office buildings of various types: mixed-use, corporate, coworking, those that belong to banks or those that are occupied by administrative institutions They occupy entire blocks, forming business districts, and their peculiar architecture generates the appearance and rank of main city streets and squares. A study by KPMG International conducted in highly developed countries in 2004 demonstrated that over a decade, between 1993 and 2002, the number of large companies that prepared sustainability reports increased from 12 to 28% [5] This trend manifested itself buildings with architectural solutions that implemented sustainability postulates, which was especially visible in new office buildings, those housing the headquarters of corporations and banks. Ghery and Cook + Fox Architects all had a key role in this [6,7,8]

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