Extend and certify the concept of comfort within built spaces

Sustainable environmental development is now recognized as imperative for the survival of our planet. On the other hand, the concept of well-being is evolving, which must be understood as an indispensable sustainability requirement for human beings. Therefore, for a true “sustainable building”, it is necessary not only to expand the range of requirements that a building must guarantee but also to find a way to concretely assess the compliance of the built space with the new demand framework. The greater attention to the user implies a broadening of the parameters to be considered and the evaluation of performance becomes the improvement strategy to design (in a new building) or modify the conditions of the internal environment (in an existing building) for the benefit of the well-being of the occupants. Certification tools capable of considering the extended needs of user comfort, applicable on different types of buildings and in various geographical contexts, are therefore indispensable. In the case of pre-existing buildings (in Europe 35% of the total are over 50 years old), a further difficulty for certification derives from the lack of technical and construction information. Among the available certifications, in this work it was chosen to apply the WELL v2 to an existing building intended for offices, which the International Well Building Institute redefined in 2018 for the assessment of human health, well-being in the broadest sense and global sustainability in buildings, through the concepts of air, water, nourishment, light, movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind, community and innovation. Starting from a study already carried out on an existing and already renovated office building, we tried to apply it, compiling in the form of tables the results obtained in the current situation and those that could be obtained with the adjustments hypothesized in the study, thanks to which a good score can be achieved in the certification.