Impact of Spatial, Thermal and Lighting Parameters on the Efficiency and Comfort of Users in Indian Workspaces

Providing comfortable indoor environment in workspaces is one of the prime concerns for better results in occupant’s performance. The indoor environmental factors in workplaces should follow functional as well as behavioural requirements. The occupant’s needs and opinions are the guiding factors to achieve good workspace designs, where the physical conditions influence their well-being and indirectly influence the work output of their employer’s business performance. The paper reports the results from an empirical study of fifteen randomly selected offices from the city of Nagpur, India having hot and dry climatic conditions covering three seasons (winter, summer, rainy). The paper aims at revealing the association/correlation between five functional parameters as spatial, furniture, thermal, lighting and acoustics and their behavioural impact on the occupants through a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Quantitative is the pooled average scores of ambient temperature, relative humidity, air velocity and illuminance levels on every work plane measured in three seasons separately. Qualitative is the pooled average scores of the opinions of the occupants based on the questionnaire administered in the summer season related to five parameters. One Way ANOVA is used to check whether the average scores assigned to the various architectural parameters by the employees of companies vary significantly. For qualitative data, Yule’s coefficient of association is used to investigate an association between users’ perception, comfort, performance and satisfaction levels about lighting and illuminance levels measured in all three seasons. Correlation analysis is carried out to obtain linear correlation between the subjective variables and the measured values of components of air and thermal parameter in three seasons. It also evaluates the user’s subjective opinions related to parameters leading to efficiency and comfort and suggests preferential parameters. This shall give an insight to designers while planning workspaces in similar conditions. The evaluation of user’s subjective opinions related to the parameters leading to efficiency and comfort has shown that spatial arrangement, lighting and thermal are the prime factors due to which efficiency and comfort get enhanced in indoor environments.