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The quality of indoor environment in buildings is one of the key factors of user satisfaction, as it affects their health and well-being. The indoor environment comprises of several components; the chief among them being the thermal and humidity microclimate, lighting, acoustics and indoor air quality. These can also be summed up by the term ?building physics?. The quality of the final indoor environment is largely decided in the initial phases of the building design. The spatial and material configuration of the ...

Daylight in buildings is evaluated using the daylight factor DF [%], which is defined as the ratio of the light level inside a structure (Ei = illuminance due to daylight at a point on the indoors working plane) to the light level outside the structure (Eo = simultaneous outdoor illuminance on a horizontal plane from an unobstructed hemisphere of overcast sky). The illuminance values are calculated for the overcast winter sky with Eo=5000 lx. In the Czech republic (and many other European countries), the daylight ...

Neighborhoods of standardized concrete block buildings form a significant part of the post-socialist build heritage. It is very important to renovate the houses to suit the needs of the current user. The reconstructions typically affect the apartment layout (e. q. uniting the kitchen with the living room, bathroom renovation) and also the indoor environment (thermal insulation, window replacement, installing air conditioning units). One of the alterations that has a major impact on both the apartment layout and th...

The environmental performance of buildings needs to be considered in the early stages of the design process. Therefore, emphasis is nowadays placed in integrating the teaching of building performance with the design studios at schools of architecture. Preparing students for the complex role of an architect as a coordinator of all the aspects of a building design is gaining more and more importance.This article describes and compares the methods of teaching building performance to architecture students at several u...