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A. Mahdavi, C. Berger:
"Can we measure built environments' affordance?";
Talk: IEA-EBC ANNEX 79 1th Experts´ Meeting 4th OB-18 Symposium, Ottawa, Canada (invited); 10-10-2018 - 10-12-2018; in: "IEA-EBC ANNEX 79 1th Experts´ Meeting 4th OB-18 Symposium", L. O´Brien, H. Burak Gunay, S. Gilani, M. Ouf (ed.); (2018), 7.

Most buildings incorporate a number of elements and devices such as windows, blinds,
luminaires, radiators, and fans to influence indoor environmental conditions. Inhabitants may be
provided with different interfaces to operate these devices. The availability, effectiveness, and
usability of control devices and their human interfaces may be argued to constitute a key
dimension of a building's quality profile, namely its indoor-environmentally relevant
"affordance", or - in human-ecological parlance - "ecological valency", which can be roughly
interpreted as a measure of a built space's responsiveness toward inhabitants' needs and
requirements. However, in contrast to some other aspects of building performance (e.g., energy
efficiency), there is a lack of systematic procedures for objective evaluation of indoor
environments' affordance in view of the availability and effectiveness of relevant control devices
and their human interfaces. The present contribution entails reflections on the possibility of
designing and implementing such procedures. From the theoretical standpoint, approaches can
be envisioned that would facilitate the measurement and certification of buildings' affordance.
Presumably, such approaches could involve detailed mathematical formulations or simpler
rating systems, resulting in certificates with numerically expressed building affordance levels.
However, the present contribution argues that attempts in this direction are bound to face a
number of non-trivial challenges, including the problematic process of assigning relative weights
and coefficient values to different domains (i.e., thermal, visual, acoustical, air quality),
different devices, and different levels of effectiveness and usability. Such challenges could
render the results of the proposed procedures non-reproducible and thus limited in
expressiveness. Nonetheless, efforts and exercises toward operationalization of indoorenvironmental
affordance can be very useful, as they have the potential to sensitize the
mindset of relevant professionals in both building design and building operation. The
affordance framework can be shown to provide a systematic and compact map to situate and
organize planning and operational objectives as relevant to provision and maintenance of
adequate indoor environments for human occupancy.

(no german version) Most buildings incorporate a number of elements and devices such as windows, blinds,
luminaires, radiators, and fans to influence indoor environmental conditions. Inhabitants may be
provided with different interfaces to operate these devices. The availability, effectiveness, and
usability of control devices and their human interfaces may be argued to constitute a key
dimension of a building's quality profile, namely its indoor-environmentally relevant
"affordance", or - in human-ecological parlance - "ecological valency", which can be roughly
interpreted as a measure of a built space's responsiveness toward inhabitants' needs and
requirements. However, in contrast to some other aspects of building performance (e.g., energy
efficiency), there is a lack of systematic procedures for objective evaluation of indoor
environments' affordance in view of the availability and effectiveness of relevant control devices
and their human interfaces. The present contribution entails reflections on the possibility of
designing and implementing such procedures. From the theoretical standpoint, approaches can
be envisioned that would facilitate the measurement and certification of buildings' affordance.
Presumably, such approaches could involve detailed mathematical formulations or simpler
rating systems, resulting in certificates with numerically expressed building affordance levels.
However, the present contribution argues that attempts in this direction are bound to face a
number of non-trivial challenges, including the problematic process of assigning relative weights
and coefficient values to different domains (i.e., thermal, visual, acoustical, air quality),
different devices, and different levels of effectiveness and usability. Such challenges could
render the results of the proposed procedures non-reproducible and thus limited in
expressiveness. Nonetheless, efforts and exercises toward operationalization of indoorenvironmental
affordance can be very useful, as they have the potential to sensitize the
mindset of relevant professionals in both building design and building operation. The
affordance framework can be shown to provide a systematic and compact map to situate and
organize planning and operational objectives as relevant to provision and maintenance of
adequate indoor environments for human occupancy.