Building Usage Quality: Understanding Obstacles

Extract

[...] A documentation of the different users and their objectives and practices will be essential in order to distinguish between users, actors and stakeholders such as end-users (individuals, teams, departments, etc.), facility managers, property owners, visitors and society as a whole. Furthermore, user actions are unpredictable and there is a long list of types and user groups. Users interpret and interact with the building with all their senses, cultural and social baggage, and often (at least partially) unconsciously. Buildings last a long time and will have interactions with many user groups at different times. This means that evaluating the relationship between people and the building is difficult. [...]

[...] This reading of the building is linked to our culture since, for example, we all know how to differentiate a museum from a house or a hospital. In addition, the building must be in line with cultural practices and, therefore, respond to the order of importance of different cultural values. For example, in France, it is inconceivable to disregard the attack on intimacy and private life, whereas in the Netherlands, the vis-à-vis between neighbors in collective housing is very well tolerated, which is evident with the proliferation of 'glass cages', these large glass bays facing the collective distribution. [...]

[...] Building Usage Quality - Understanding the Obstacles Leading to Good Building Usage Each building is constructed to meet one or more needs: for education, for work, to live, etc. Depending on their characteristics, buildings contribute to efficiency, effectiveness, and the satisfaction of their occupants. In fact, the official definition of building usage has been adopted in order to meet international standards, that is to say by 'the measure in which a system can be used by specified users to achieve specified objectives with efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can accomplish a specified set of tasks in a particular environment'1. [...]

[...] Therefore, there are a certain number of obstacles to good building usage, which it appears indispensable to understand in order to avoid or solve them as best as possible. First of all, the most obvious but no less important, technical failure and non-compliance of a building lead to limited use of the building due, on the one hand, to technical problems that can weaken the structure directly or indirectly, such as flooding problems for example, or, on the other hand, non-compliance with regulatory standards such as the implementation of corridors that are too narrow and do not meet fire safety standards. [...]