Indoor Environmental Quality of the first European ModelHome 2020: Home for Life

The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of our buildings is essential to our health. In developing sustainable residential buildings of the future there lie a great challenge in combining energy efficiency with healthy and good IEQ while creating beautiful buildings and environments that give more than they take. The Active House vision approached exactly this challenge by combining energy indoor climate and environment to develop ideas and knowledge of our future buildings. The ModelHome 2020 project grasps the Active House vision and materialises it by designing and constructing six buildings as suggestions on our future sustainable buildings. These buildings constitute a live scaled laboratory for exploration of every aspect possible. Real people move into these buildings to make it possible to explore not merely the technical performance of the buildings but especially also creating the possibility of exploring the qualities and experiential performance of the house. This paper focus on exploring the IEQ in the first of the ModelHome 2020 projects the residential single family house Home for Life in Denmark. The house is measured through one year while a test family live in the house – carrying out normal everyday-life-activities. Thereby both the technical performance of the house is measured and the occupants’ experiences are measured. To be able to perform this holistic hybrid measurements methods from different scientific fields are applied. Natural and engineering science methods support measuring the quantitative performance of the buildings as temperature and CO2-level. Methods from artistic and humanistic sciences are applied for measuring occupants experiences – and thereby the building’s ability to perform in a more qualitative manner. These methods include observation, interviews and cultural probes. The paper describes results on the daylight environment, the thermal environment and the indoor air quality – presented through both quantitative and qualitative means. Lastly the paper discuss how the different results can challenge and support each other and support creating a wholesome evaluation of our future sustainable homes – based on a human centric perspective. INTRODUCTION In the Northern European countries we spend up to 90 percent of our time indoors – often in buildings with doubtful indoor environment [1]. Therefore, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of our residential buildings is a central subject that affects us all in our everyday lives – whether we are conscious of it or not. We wish to do something about these issues and aim at creating better and healthier environments for people with plenty of daylight and fresh air. Through the Active House vision we aim at developing buildings that give more than they take by uniting carbon neutral buildings with good IEQ adapted to the surrounding environment [2]. The vision is realised in an extensive living laboratory through the ModelHome 2020 project [3]. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate different solutions and approaches to the challenge of combing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment with carbon neutrality. The project is unfolded through design and construction demonstration buildings. Architecture and energy systems are optimised to each of the six specific locations and seven criteria for both energy performance and IEQ are defined to realise the vision of the project year period to test and experience Fig. 1. “Home for Life”. South This paper studies the IEQ of the first realised ModelHome2020 through considerations and analysis of both quantitative constructed in Denmark and has been tested for a one year period The paper describes the methodology used for measuring the house approach combining quantitative methods from natural and engineering science with qualitative methods from the artistic and humanistic sciences. The setup aim at explori IEQ from various sides by illuminating how the sciences can support each other when e.g. the measured optimum IEQ does not meet the occupants experiences. We wonder, should a good IEQ be determined through means of numbers solely an indicator? Through presenting results on daylight, thermal environment and indoor air quality we illuminate how respectively quantitative and qualitative methods can provide data that tells the story from different perspectives. Lastly challenge and support each other and support creating a wholesome evaluation of our future sustainable homes – based on a human centric perspective. METHOD In this paper the case study house is subject to explorat quantitative and qualitative methods with focus on the kitchen/dining room as it is the most used room in the house (also see fig. 2). The Mixed Methods approach considering all of them equally important. This approach illustrates that the aspects are inter dependent and inter-connected studying the qualitative aspects and vice versa. Below, we summarise the quantita qualitative methods used for exploring and assessing the IEQ of Home for Life. Methods for quantitative and qualitative evaluation Results on daylight are based on calculated daylight factor levels as continuous measurements of daylight levels will require a permanent grid of sensors in the house during occupancy impossible setting in a family’s everyday life. As the daylight factor is independent of actual [3]. When built, test families move into the houses these designs of a future generation of sustainable homes. facade (left). Daylight, ventilation and energy and qualitative aspects. This first house, by the Simonsen –