Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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Occupant comfort in mixed-mode spaces within air-conditioned offices

ALESSI, ANGELA ( 2014)

This research investigated how people felt about and interacted with a mixed-mode space. Occupants’ thermoregulatory patterns in a multifunctional changeover mixed-mode space become an indicator of a new way in which corporate management allow design and technology to unfold in the workplace. The National Australia Bank (NAB) at 800 Bourke Street, Melbourne Docklands represented a unique opportunity for a case study, having nine floors of open-plan air-conditioned offices and the north façade designed with mixed-mode multifunctional kitchen-lounges at every floor where people can choose between air-conditioning and natural ventilation. The case study was used as a basis of investigating the indoor environment and its occupants through field work and the adaptive thermal comfort theory. With this theory people were not considered only thermal sensors or passive recipients of the thermal environment (de Dear, 2004), but active elements that modified the conditions of the space in order to establish their most comfortable thermal environment.