Most building performance evaluations only describe whether a building meets certain criteria. In contrast, this report describes the performance of the Kresge Foundation Complex (Complex) in relation to industry‐standard design and operations performance criteria while examining the appropriateness of these criteria for the Complex and similar high‐performance buildings. More specifically, this study examines the Complex's performance in 20 areas. It also highlights potential flaws in human factors, energy use, landscape water use, and acoustics criteria and suggests improvements in biodiversity and stormwater criteria.

The Center for the Built Environment (CBE) and associates analyzed the performance of the Complex, a highperformance green project built in 2004 with a Platinum rating in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system for New Construction (LEED‐NC). The CBE team analyzed the following aspects of the Complex: human factors; indoor water use; stormwater management; landscape performance (water use and biodiversity); acoustics; lighting; indoor air quality (IAQ); thermal comfort; energy performance; and first, life‐cycle, and operational costs (Table 1.) CBE used evaluation criteria drawn from industry standards, guidelines, best practices when available, and professional judgment where standards were not definitive or required interpretation.

The results were derived from CBE's occupant satisfaction database; the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Performance Measurement Protocols (PMP); LEED‐NC Version 2.1 design criteria; and other relevant criteria for biodiversity,1 operations, and life‐cycle costs. Appendix A contains a complete description of the basis for the scoring for each of the 20 evaluations.

Most building performance evaluations only describe whether a building meets certain criteria. In contrast, this report describes the performance of the Kresge Foundation Complex (Complex) in relation to industry‐standard design and operations performance criteria while examining the appropriateness of these criteria for the Complex and similar high‐performance buildings. More specifically, this study examines the Complex's performance in 20 areas. It also highlights potential flaws in human factors, energy use, landscape water use, and acoustics criteria and suggests improvements in biodiversity and stormwater criteria.

The Center for the Built Environment (CBE) and associates analyzed the performance of the Complex, a highperformance green project built in 2004 with a Platinum rating in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system for New Construction (LEED‐NC). The CBE team analyzed the following aspects of the Complex: human factors; indoor water use; stormwater management; landscape performance (water use and biodiversity); acoustics; lighting; indoor air quality (IAQ); thermal comfort; energy performance; and first, life‐cycle, and operational costs (Table 1.) CBE used evaluation criteria drawn from industry standards, guidelines, best practices when available, and professional judgment where standards were not definitive or required interpretation.

The results were derived from CBE's occupant satisfaction database; the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Performance Measurement Protocols (PMP); LEED‐NC Version 2.1 design criteria; and other relevant criteria for biodiversity,1 operations, and life‐cycle costs. Appendix A contains a complete description of the basis for the scoring for each of the 20 evaluations.

Table 1 shows a summary scorecard of the Complex’s performance, for all 20 evaluations. The (+) sign indicates conformity with these criteria and performance consistent with what the authors consider appropriate for high‐performance buildings. The (‐) sign indicates nonconformity with relevant criteria or other causes for concern. The building meets or exceeds performance criteria in 14 of the 20 areas evaluated.

The occupant survey results in Table 1 were obtained from the CBE Occupant Satisfaction Survey, which is cited in several guidelines and green building rating systems, including LEED‐NC. PMP results in Table 1 are based on ASHRAE’s PMP. Although the United States Green Building Council, which developed the LEED‐NC rating system (USGBC 2002), is a coauthor of PMP, PMP differs from the LEED‐NC Version 2.1 rating system under which the building was certified. It describes performance measurement techniques for buildings in operation and is based on industry standards where applicable. It does not cover buildings in design, does not specify performance hurdles, and is not a rating system. Neither does PMP cover site issues. Instead, PMP and other criteria represent a way to evaluate how well the performance objectives of LEED‐NC were achieved.

It is a widely accepted fact that buildings must use less energy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to help mitigate global climate change. At the same time, buildings are for people: to succeed they must also provide environments that suit their intended occupants. Researchers usually consider these two criteria – reducing GHG emissions and providing good environments for their occupants -- separately despite their close relationship; buildings generally require energy and emit GHGs to produce suitable environments. This building performance case study presents findings about energy use and occupant sentiment together, seeking to uncover new relationships between the two concerns. It considers the designers, owners, operators and occupants’ contributions and relationship to energy use in the California State Teachers Retirement System

(CalSTRS) Headquarters building in West Sacramento, California. More specifically, the study investigates how the design and operations processes contribute to the building’s low source energy use intensity, as indicated by its ENERGY STAR rating of 95, while maintaining high occupant satisfaction ratings for building features and indoor environmental quality (IEQ.) The study reviews these satisfaction ratings in light of the low measured energy intensity.

This report addresses issues commonly observed in green building design and operations; and the recommendations it includes suggest ways to enhance the design process, improve operations efficiency and increase occupant satisfaction. For these reasons, this report is particularly useful to designers of green office buildings and members of organizations that own and/or operate office buildings.

Findings were developed from surveys and interviews of building occupants, building operators, owners’ representatives and facilities staff. These surveys and interviews were performed during spring 2011 and were conducted in close collaboration with Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (HOK) staff. The project was a collaboration between Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley, and Portland

State University.

The report proceeds as follows. We begin with a description of the building and its physical context, followed by a discussion of the data and methods used. A discussion of findings is next. Findings related to building performance are presented first, followed by findings related to operations. A summary completes the report

This paper reports on analysis of open-ended survey responses in a commercial building occupant indoor environment satisfaction survey database maintained by UC Berkeley. Building on past analyses of Likert-scale satisfaction ratings and categories of dissatisfaction on acoustics, temperature, lighting and overall building and workspace, we use text analysis software to enrich understanding of occupants’ perspectives on what matters about the buildings they work in, and why. These comments detail interactions between occupants and their physical environment, and reflect on expectations, stress, and concerns that lie outside dimension-by-dimension assessments of physical building characteristics. They thus speak to gaps between theories of how buildings work for their occupants and experiences of how they actually do. Together they assert the importance of user-centered views that are currently known through anecdote but poorly incorporated in more clinical or topdown views of building environments.

This paper reports on analysis of open-ended survey responses from a commercial building indoor environment satisfaction survey database maintained by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. Building from satisfaction ratings and standardised categorical responses collected in surveys for 192 U.S. office buildings, text analysis software is used to analyse text responses to open-ended survey questions, focusing on occupants’ perspectives on the workplace and building overall, temperature, and acoustics. These occupant texts detail interactions between occupants and their physical environment in a technical sense but also interpret these interactions, assess their consequences, and reflect on social relationships and other matters that lie outside dimension-by-dimension assessments of the physical environment. Viewed together these texts reveal a user-centred perspective that points to issues that rest below the surface of more technical analyses of buildings, such as over airconditioning, worker stress and frustration, workplace usability, and relationships between physical and other aspects of the workplace. Attending to this perspective could lead to improvements in occupant experience, building and technology design, building operations, and survey research, as well as inform initiatives that require occupant adaptation and cooperation, including those for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

The indoor environmental quality of an office building certified A+ according to CasaClima (Italian energy rating method) was assessed using the Italian translation of the survey developed and used in more than 420 buildings (47000 respondents) by the Center for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley. The results show a high level of satisfaction with the indoor environmental quality in the building is , with 93% of participants satisfied.

Most studies of offices examine their physical or symbolic attributes independently. Yet office components can contain both attributes. To minimize unintended but potentially negative effects on occupants, researchers must consider both the physical and symbolic attributes of components when making recommendations about their deployment. This study compares the effects of the physical and symbolic attributes of architectural enclosure on worker performance using a survey database that contains workers’ ratings of their office components. The amount of enclosure is determined by the height of the occupant’s workspace divider, with taller dividers offering more enclosure. Divider height is positively associated with ratings of the two physical attributes considered: speech privacy and visual privacy. Divider height, however, does not affect occupants’ ratings of a home-like atmosphere or workplace pride, the symbolic attributes considered. Yet, the occupants indicate that the two symbolic attributes are more important than the two physical attributes in improving their work performance. This might lead to office design choices. An office designed to maximize worker performance might do so by maximizing its symbolic impact. This analysis suggests that an office’s symbolic impact may not always be increased by including more offices with tall dividers like enclosed, private offices.