Elements That Contribute to Healthy Building Design

The elements that contribute to a healthy building are multifactorial and can be discussed from different perspectives. We present three viewpoints of designing a healthy building: the importance of sustainable development, the role of occupants for ensuring indoor air quality, and ongoing developments related to indoor finishes with low chemical emissions and good fungal resistance.

Discussion: Sustainable design rediscovers the social, environmental, and technical values of pedestrian and mixed-use communities, using existing infrastructures including "main streets" and small-town planning principles and recapturing indoor–outdoor relationships. This type of design introduces nonpolluting materials and assemblies with lower energy requirements and higher durability and recyclability. Building occupants play a major role in maintaining healthy indoor environments, especially in residences. Contributors to indoor air quality include cleaning habits and other behaviors ; consumer products, furnishings, and appliances purchases, as well as where and how the occupants use them. Certification of consumer products and building materials as low-emitting products is a primary control measure for achieving good indoor air quality. Key products in this respect are furniture, flooring, paints and coatings, adhesives and sealants, wall coverings, wood products, textiles, insulation , and cleaning products. Finishing materials play a major role in the quality of indoor air as related to moisture retention and mold growth.

Conclusions: Sustainable design emphasizes the needs of infrastructure, lower energy consumption, durability, and recyclability. To ensure good indoor air quality, the product development for household use should aim to reduce material susceptibility to contaminants such as mold and should adopt consumer-oriented product labeling.

Introduction

A healthy building is based on the successful fulfillment of many requirements. For each building, sound design and construction are necessary for its technical functioning and mechanical stability and for the basic safety of its occupants. However, this is not sufficient to ensure indoor environmental quality (IEQ) for its occupants. There are a number of other factors that affect the occupants' well-being either directly or indirectly. Among such factors are heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and activities of the occupants, including the use of office equipment or household activities such as cooking, cleaning, or applying pesticides. The risk assessment of indoor contaminants and the effectiveness of interventions are challenges faced globally because of vast differences in the types of residences and their climates as well as the many types of household products, furniture, appliances, and so on, that are available to consumers today. Examples of these...