Sustaining Well-Being: the Energy-Human Nexus

Speaker: Prof Sergio Altomonte, Architectural Engineering, Catholic University of Louvain

Well-being in the built environment is a topic that nowadays frequently features in building standards and certification schemes, in scholarly articles, and in the general press. However, despite this surge in attention, there are still many questions on how to effectively sustain well-being in the design and operation of our built spaces. Among other challenges, in fact, there may be substantial discrepancies between requirements for buildings’ energy efficiency, the transient conditions that users demand for their comfort and satisfaction, and what they effectively need to be healthy and feel well over time.

Prof Sergio Altomonte is Chair of Architectural Physics at the Universite’ catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where he is president of the Louvain Research Institute in Architecture and Built environment, and director of the research group Architecture et Climat. He has held academic positions in Italy (Rome), Australia (Melbourne) and the UK (Nottingham), and visiting roles in Denmark (Copenhagen) and the USA (Berkeley). His research expertise sits at the intersection between architectural design, indoor environmental quality and human psychophysics, aiming at the development and testing of strategies and solutions that enhance user comfort, health, and well-being, support energy performance, and improve the spatial qualities of buildings’ design. 

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This seminar is a part of the The Martin Centre Research Seminar Series.