Impact of indoor environmental quality weighting schemes on office architectural design decisions

The importance of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) cannot be overstated, as it impacts the health and satisfaction of occupants. To evaluate overall indoor comfort, all four IEQ domains must be considered together. However, there is a lack of guidance on how to prioritize each domain and corresponding metrics, particularly during the early design stage. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of different weighting schemes on commercial building design elements to have high overall comfort. First, a parametric modeling approach for a shoe-box office building is developed to quantify IEQ domains using various design parameters. Subsequently, multiple weighting options are defined, resulting in an aggregated IEQ score. Next, high-performance designs are identified and compared based on each weighting scheme for two different climates. Results show that, as long as all four comfort domains are considered, the choice of weighting scheme does not significantly affect the selection of high-performance designs. Therefore, an equal weighting scheme is suggested for the early stage. This paper presents an original approach to support design decisions and the mutual weightings of IEQ factors.