Students’ activities based design of classrooms: How to optimize IEQ in classrooms while achieving energy efficient goals?

A good indoor environment in classrooms is important because school children spend a significant amount of their time at schools and children are more susceptible than adults. It is also clear that a school indoor environment can affect the wellbeing and performance of students but a comfortable and healthy school indoor environment consumes energy. In the last decades, indoor environment optimization and energy efficient measures have been introduced to reduce this problem. However, although those standards are met, the IEQ as experienced by occupants is still not acceptable. Also, even with the implementation of energy efficient measures, energy consumption keeps rising while health seems to decrease.
Based on a review of literature, this paper identifies the causes for the discrepancies and future directions of research are proposed. It is concluded that future research should focus on holistic assessment of IEQ factors and take into account students’ needs and influence.