Humans spend 90% of their time in buildings

According to a study by the World Health Organization, humans spend an average of 90% of their lives in buildings, including homes, offices, schools, hospitals, and shopping malls. This shows the importance of the living environment for human health and quality of life.

Ensuring a comfortable and safe living environment

A comfortable and safe living environment is one that meets the health, mental, and physical needs of humans. Specifically, a comfortable living environment must ensure the following factors:

• Air quality: Indoor air must be clean, free of pollutants, and contain enough oxygen to breathe.
• Natural lighting: Natural lighting helps humans feel comfortable, relaxed, and improve their health.
• Temperature and humidity: The temperature and humidity in the building must be appropriate to the needs of humans, avoiding too hot or too cold.
• Sound environment: The sound environment in the building must be quiet, avoiding noise, affecting health and mental health.

Comfort is a subjective concept

Comfort is a feeling of satisfaction and ease with the environment we are exposed to. Comfort in a building includes the four factors listed above. All depend, in part, on the objective conditions of the environment and the rest, on the physiological and psychological conditions of humans.

Therefore, it is important to emphasize that comfort is a subjective concept that varies from person to person.

Energy consumption is a necessary condition to ensure comfort

A building needs to consume energy to meet the needs of living, ensuring comfort for humans. For example, to ensure that the temperature and humidity in the house are appropriate, we need to use heating or cooling systems. To have natural light, we need to design a window and door system.

Thus, we see that energy consumption is a necessary condition to ensure human comfort. A building that does not consume energy will lead to a lack of comfort.

Optimal energy consumption to achieve the necessary comfort

However, if we consume a lot of energy, will we achieve more comfort? Living in a house that consumes twice as much energy as it needs, will it achieve twice as much comfort?

The answer is no.

Reality and experience show that we can fully achieve the necessary comfort but still significantly reduce the energy consumption of the building. The most typical evidence is the trend of green building design, energy-saving buildings have become popular and mandatory in developed countries.

In Vietnam, green buildings are still in their early stages of development

In Vietnam, green buildings are still in the early stages of development and need to be scaled up to become the main trend of the civil engineering industry in the future.

Energy-efficient architecture

When we have achieved comfort in the building with optimal energy consumption, combining with excellent spatial quality, we have achieved a building of energy-efficient architecture.

What is energy-efficient architecture?

Energy-efficient architecture is a broad concept that includes many factors, including:

• Energy saving: Energy-efficient architecture is designed to minimize the need for energy use for purposes such as heating, cooling, lighting, etc.
• Renewable energy: Energy-efficient architecture can be integrated with renewable energy systems such as solar energy, wind energy, etc.
• Space optimization: Energy-efficient architecture is designed to optimize space, use natural resources efficiently.

Benefits of energy-efficient architecture

Energy-efficient architecture has many benefits, including:

• Reduce energy consumption: Energy-efficient architecture can help reduce energy consumption by up to 50%, which can save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Improve indoor air quality: Energy-efficient architecture can help improve indoor air quality by reducing pollutants and allergens.
• Increase occupant comfort: Energy-efficient architecture can help increase occupant comfort by providing a more comfortable and healthy environment.