2020 Volume 85 Issue 778 Pages 935-942
We performed a post occupancy evaluation in a school building in which transparent glass was installed from floor to ceiling in a side corridor. The glass allowed students with hearing impairment to see each other from both the side corridor and an external passage placed alongside the corridor. We performed an experiment to determine how the psychological quantities of students with hearing impairment vary when an imitation wall is installed as the side corridor skin to decrease the glass area and narrow the view. We obtained the following results.
1) The mean assessment of the thermal environment in the side corridor reported by students and faculty was that it was hotter in summer and colder in winter than usual, except for the first floor, which receives no direct sunlight. The fifth and sixth floors, which offer almost no shade, were more intolerable than other floors because of their large windows and consequent heat in summer. The mean value students reported on a five-level rating scale for window size on each floor was “just the right size” when viewed from both the side corridor and external passage, and there was little difference among floors. Overall, 11% of students and 32% of faculty members said the window “should be slightly smaller” or “should be smaller, ” respectively.
2) The mean assessment varies depending on wall type, even with the same glass area. The mean assessment tended to become more positive when we used a wainscot and hanging wall or wall with slits, and more negative when we used a hanging wall.
Based on the experimental result, we examined whether dissatisfaction and intolerance differed significantly between a 100% glass area ratio and each glass area ratio in each wall type. We used a chi‐square test with a significance level of 1%. No significant differences were proved when the glass area ratio was 83% and greater with a hanging wall, 67% and greater with wainscot, 50% and greater for a wainscot and hanging wall, and 67% and greater for a wall with slits. Although we cannot say that statistically there were no significant differences between a glass area ratio of 100% and the cases with these glass area ratios, the above result shows us how to decrease the glass area ratio below 100% without considerably increasing dissatisfaction and intolerance, except for the case of 67% for wainscot in which the dissatisfaction and intolerance rates are higher than the other cases.
Code of Ethics
Ethical standards of the publisher (‘Ethical Standards Concerning the Peer Review for the Presentation of Architectural Transactions and Works’)
