“Stepping beyond traditional boundaries, (re)creating healthy buildings”, was the slogan or motto of the recently organised Healthy Buildings 2015 Europe. http://hb2015-europe.org/
This conference was organized by ISIAQ.nl (http://www.isiaq.nl/v2/isiaq/) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (https://www.tue.nl/en/), under the auspices of ISIAQ International (http://www.isiaq.org/). Experts covered knowledge areas regarding Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ).
More than 360 abstracts were received and 270 papers were accepted in the end. Both technical session and interactive workshops paved the way for knowledge sharing. Marcel Loomans, President of this conference and also a professional at Eindhoven University of Technology, stated that the multidisciplinary of healthy buildings must be dealt with. So, many different aspects, areas and fields of technologies together create good IEQ and healthy buildings.
Majority of papers were on indoor air quality and thermal comfort for sure, but noise and other parameters are indeed also part of the healthy buildings. Noise is possibly the second biggest cause of dissatisfaction in the workplace and most likely the biggest cause of reduced worker performance. So, acoustics/noise/sound surely should be more visible on the agenda – as lighting and other ergonomic areas also of course. Thus, maybe this Healthy Building conference just might pay more attention to other disciplines in the future, or!?
Stroopwafel – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroopwafel
Ecophon (www.ecophon.com), provider of room acoustic knowledge and solutions, was one of the main sponsors of the conference. Ecophon was also actively part of organising the only workshop on sound and acoustics; “What is IEQ without acoustics?” Moderators were Carsten Svensson (Ecophon) and Ep Marinus (occupational hygienist from Netherlands) and the following papers were presented in the workshop.
Nigel Oseland, Workplace Unlimited, United Kingdom:
(651) Psychoacoustic and people-centred approach (with Paige Hodsman from Ecophon)
Martijn Vercammen, Peutz, Netherlands: (http://www.peutz.nl/ / http://www.peutzgroup.com/)
(652) Concrete core activation and suspended ceilings: designing for comfort, energy efficiency and good acoustics
Colin Campbell, Saint-Gobain Ecophon AB, Sweden
(655) The challenge of meeting both acoustic and thermal comfort in 21st century school (Presenter: Guus Klamerek, Ecophon, Netherlands)
Nigel Oseland from Workplace Unlimited made a thoughtful post about his participation in HB15 at his blog.
http://workplaceunlimited.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=3
