Occupant-controlled heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems allow inhabitants of open-plan spaces some degree of control over their immediate microclimate. Typically, cooled air is supplied at floor or desktop levels. The amount and direction of air flow is under occupant control. Productivity increases have been attributed to this form of control. This paper proposes a simplified model of the thermal environment created by an occupant-controlled HV AC system and the behavior of the occupants within it.

New office buildings in Spain are nearly always designed to be air conditioned. The architect Emilio Miguel Mitre Associates (EMMA) has designed a building which avoids air conditioning, thereby reducing energy demand. The design uses the principles of high thermal mass combined with night ventilation, reduction of solar gain during the summer months, high levels of insulation, evaporative cooling, and buried pipes to provide cooling when the external temperature rises above 30°C.

The high environmental_ quality of the buildings in the south of France requires a good control of the summer thermal comfort. For economical and ecological reasons this purpose must be reached essentially by architectural design. In the program "Haute Qualite Environnementale" of the "Plan-Construction". 58 collective housings have been built in Nice in a dense urban zone with a principal consideration to the summer comfort, specially to allow a good transversal ventilation in the moderate hot and humid climate of this city.

This paper describes and discusses the energy saving design features of the Learning Resources Centre at Anglia Polytechnic University. As part of the University's policy on environmental conservation, the design brief for this new Queen's Building specified a low energy passive design solution. The building, which has been occupied since September 1994, was awarded a THERMIE grant to demonstrate a 50% reduction in the annual energy related carbon dioxide emissions for a building of this type.

This paper outlines progress in the THERMIE Target project Energy Comfort 2000 after three and a half years. Seven of the eight buildings are under construction and the eighth will be starting on site in May 1997. The project covers the design, construction, commissioning and monitoring of the buildings which are offices, university buildings, and public and recreational buildings, together with "horizontal activities" which link the projects together.

This paper sets out the monitoring results of the York Energy Demonstration Project (YEDP), carried out under the UK Government's Greenhouse Programme. Energy savings of up to 50% were observed as a result of incorporating energy efficiency measures into housing modernisation programmes. The project also provided insights into a number of replication issues.

In order to study pollution dispersion in built up area, aeraulic simulation at reduced scale in a boundary layer wind tunnel is intensively used at CSTB. The experimental set up and the associated procedures are described here. A comparison with complementary approaches developed at CSTB, numerical simulation and full scale measurements using tracer gas release is also provided.