Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part presents the performance and occupant perception of buildings employing various combinations of Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling and Active Downdraught Cooling. A holistic and multi-criteria user satisfaction survey was used to evaluate the building performance and identify areas for improvement from which to derive lessons for future best practice. The occupants’ surveys were undertaken using the Workplace Questionnaire developed and licensed by the Building Use Studies (BUS), UK. The BUS occupant questionnaire and methodology is described by A. Leaman and has been extensively employed since the Post Occupancy Review of Buildings and their Environment project between 1995 and 2002. The questionnaire produces a comprehensive evaluation of the occupants’ perceptions of the building, filtered through their ‘historic’ memory of the building environment over the duration of their occupancy, and does not relate to a specific set of contingent environmental conditions.