What Do Occupants Want? Selected Results from a Field Survey Carried Out in Austrian Residential Buildings and Office Buildings

This contribution presents findings from a qualitative and qualitative user survey carried out in residential and office buildings in 2012 and early 2013. Focus is on user behaviour and consumer aspects in highly energy efficient buildings taking into account societal, social, ethnical, and especially gender-related aspects, and analysing the building design concept in comparison with the actual energy consumption during building operation. The survey tackles the day-to-day life of occupants living or working in highly energy efficient buildings. It reveals the attitude of building users concerning energy efficiency standards and innovative HVAC systems, and serves to analyse the impact of occupants' behaviour on building operation and energy consumption. The development towards plus-energy-buildings (buildings which produce more energy than what occupants consume) causes a change in the role of consumers: consumers turn to active stakeholders, because their way of using the building will be decisive whether the building actually achieves plus-energy status, or not. Therefore there is the need to fully understand the motivations and options for actions of building users, in order to make the new concepts work, such as the concept of plus-energy-building and the concept of smart city as a whole. The user survey is part of the research project 'GINGER – gender aspects in using building, energy and resources' funded by FFG. The study started in July 2012 and will be completed in June 2014. It is based on the deep analysis of new and existing buildings which comply with ambitious energy-related criteria and belong to a broad range of building typologies (multi-unit residential buildings, office buildings, schools and kindergartens, educational campus). The results of the extensive user survey will contribute to improving communication measures, design process and product development in order to meet users needs in a better way. As a consequence, this will improve the energy performance of buildings during operation.