Designing healthy, comfortable and energy-efficient buildings: lessons from enquiries within the european Hope project

Within the European research project HOPE, a multi-disciplinary study was performed in nine European countries, by auditing 160 apartments and office buildings, of which half of them can be characterised as having low energy use. The investigating tools were a systematic inspection, interviews with the building management and questionnaire surveys of occupants. Using a multicriteria analysis method, a group of buildings perceived as healthy and comfortable and with low energy use as well as another group of high energy, perceived as less comfortable and healthy buildings were selected. Significant differences between these two groups of buildings have been identified. It can be concluded that high quality buildings that are perceived healthy, comfortable and have a good energy performance can be designed and built at will. These results, together with experience gained from former projects and literature lead us to present guidelines for creating such HQ buildings.