The quality of indoor environment in dwellings is provided by physical properties of building constructions and by operation of HVAC-systems. From the point of view of comfort, energy and economy as well as HVAC-system are designed and operated to maintain an acceptable indoor climate, i.e. an acceptable air quality and thermal environment play the key role in dwellings.

About 100 office buildings in the Flanders and Brussels regions have been subject to a surveyof energy aspects and indoor climate parameters. Building characteristics and energy use havebeen mapped for all buildings; for 48 of them a database has been built containing buildingand room dimensions, materials used for the building shell, windows, glazing, solar shading,occupancy, equipment characteristics (heating, ventilation, cooling, lighting, office equipment.

In this work a methodology for indoor environmental quality assessment was applied, based on thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort indices and on their analysis and spatial representation.Object of the study was one secondary school classroom of the Province of Torino (Italy), representative of several typologies of educational buildings, showing unsatisfactory environmental conditions.

A field survey on thermal comfort in Algeria has never been previously attempted, and for this reason the present study was conducted. The present paper will present a field study of thermal comfort in Algeria. A thermal comfort survey has been held among 160 persons in 4 towns of Algeria representing three different climatic regions. The survey has been carried out in two different types of buildings: Domestic buildings and Office buildings. Subjective data were collected from 160 people by the use of questionnaires.

In the introduction of the paper are reasons presented, which cause local thermal discomfort. Currently the reasons of asymmetric thermal radiation are not clearly explained. Therefore I oriented my experimetal laboratory measurements, which were carried out in a special microclimatic laboratory on radiant ceiling heating. A special laboratory model of heating of interior was created. The measurements were performed with the help of a thermal mannequin that was used to measure the asymmetric radiation (that is asymmetry of perceived temperature).

A research project is designed to evaluate different aspects affecting human comfort in an architectural space. One of the basic parts of the research project is the evaluation of the auditory, visual and thermal comfort. A university library in Istanbul is selected as the subject of the research. The library building, which has unusual settlement and design peculiarities, is an interesting case from acoustical view point as well, because of the closeness to a heavy traffic road and architectural properties.

The construction of dwellings for people with low incomes in developing countries encompasses a broad range of issues starting from the choice of the building site, to the construction phase and finally to the evaluation of the building itself. For tropical climates, the thermal evaluation of low-cost dwellings should be primarily related to the optimization of internal comfort conditions. Usually low-cost housing projects are implemented throughout Brazil equally, with no concern to the climatic region where houses are to be built.

The indoor environmental quality of a building is intended as the thermal, visual, acoustic and indoor air quality performances as a whole, which provide health and comfort for occupants. In architecture, global approach to environmental quality design is necessary. High levels of quality are needed for each aspect, even though design requirements may at times be opposed. In order to determine opportunities and limits of global approach, problems related to visual and acoustic comfort assessment were examined for a baroque church in Italy.

The aim of this paper is to explain the results of a research project run in Yildiz Technical University which focuses on the optimum building envelope design for visual, thermal and acoustical comfort conditions in the offices placed in Istanbul city center. In this project, the building envelope alternatives are examined in terms of light, heat and sound considering the materials used mostly in Turkey.

The main goal of the present study was to determine thermal comfort parameters for dwellers of low-cost houses for a given set of indoor environmental conditions. 112 people living in over 60 dwellings were interviewed, according to a comfort questionnaire where information regarding age, sex, clothing, level of activity, thermal sensation and preference of the subjects was collected. Environmental factors such as air temperature and humidity were simultaneously registered with T/RH data-loggers. Results were then analyzed by comparing subjective and environmental factors.