Swiss-Korean academic exchange program ARC-HEST

CONTENT

Attention to human comfort and performance in the indoor built environment is growing worldwide due to the increased number of hours spent indoors and the space limitation in highly populated cities. The working environment, cultural differences, traditions and challenges of South Korea and Switzerland as well as the post-pandemic context is fertile soil to brainstorm around the indoor built environment issues. As illustrated on the figure, this exchange program focuses on the synergy between architectural design, human factors, and technologies in the office buildings as well as their combined effects on the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and interaction of the occupants with the building.

This exchange program is jointly organised by the smartlivinglab in Fribourg and the 3 participating Korean universities. It benefits from the support of the Science & Technology Office attached to the Swiss embassy in Seoul.

TEACHING AIMS

• Learning how to assess the performances of a building regarding comfort and occupants satisfaction at the workplace through physical measurements, observations and interviews
• Understanding how and how far architectural design considerations must/can/cannot take into account requirements on the indoor environmental conditions affecting occupants satisfaction and well-being
• Practical experience of a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural team work, discovery of the strengths and limits of such kind of collaboration
• Increased mutual knowledge of Swiss and Korean cultures and traditions in architecture, engineering, and technology

TEACHING AIMS

Both the summer and the winter schools programs will comprise lectures, workshops, and studios. All multi-disciplinary group work will be closely associated with visits, on-site measurement sessions, performance assessments and interviews over selected case study buildings equipped with workplaces in shared offices. Based on their findings, the groups will then try to develop innovative solutions for the improvement of the built indoor environment, the satisfaction of the occupants and the human-building interactions. The focus will be put on the relationships between these functional features and the architectural aspects in order to better conciliate their respective requirements especially in the post pandemic era.