Special Issue "HBI for Climate: Designing Human-Building Interaction (HBI) Approaches and Prototypes for Climate Change"

Dear Colleagues,

The majority (90%) of people’s time is spent in the built environment (Heschong, 2021). This includes the homes we live in, the buildings we work in, and where we consume most of our energy and produce most of our greenhouse gases (Global Status Report, 2017). Human–Building Interaction (HBI) has been defined as the “study and design of interactive opportunities for the occupants to shape the physical, spatial, and social product of their built environments” (Alavi et al, 2016), thus providing alternative paths to address climate change and energy issues from an occupants’ lens. In this Special Issue, we seek to engage with academics, researchers, and practitioners who have been working in the area of Human–Building Interaction to explore how this emerging domain can be defined within the context of sustainability and with the approaches of computational design, simulation, analysis, fabrication and management, and observation and behavior assessment to address the UN Sustainable Development Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

We are pleased to invite you to submit a journal paper for inclusion in this Special Issue, entitled HBI for Climate: Designing Human–Building Interaction (HBI) Approaches and Prototypes for Climate Change.

This Special Issue proposes to: (a) review and determine goals for design practices relevant to HBI for Climate; (b) identify shared challenges and opportunities; (c) uncover strategies for co-design within a wider range of contexts and applications; and (d) explore an HBI for Climate research agenda that addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

In this Special Issue, original research and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Methodologies and methods (or the lack thereof) that could bring together large data sets (quantitative) and human/occupant end-user perspectives via qualitative accounts.
• Identification of drivers and triggers for occupant behavior that increase or reduce energy consumption in buildings.
• Identification of features and attributes of buildings (and their immediate surroundings) that support and encourage health and well-being, including physical activity and positive social interactions.
• Approaches to inform and/or promote human agency with increased access to building information and data.
• Design practices relevant to HBI.
• Presentation of HBI-focused prototypes or field studies.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

REFERENCES:

Alavi, H. S., Lalanne, D., Nembrini, J., Churchill, E., Kirk, D., & Moncur, W. (2016, May). Future of human-building interaction. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3408-3414).

Heschong, L. (2021). Visual Delight in Architecture: Daylight, Vision, and View. Routledge.

Global Status Report, 2017; Accessed 15th October 2021 from: https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/files/UNEP%20188_GABC_en%20%28web%29.pdf

Dr. Glenda Amayo Caldwell
Dr. Veronica Garcia-Hansen
Dr. Debra Cushing
Dr. Francisca Rodriguez 
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• human–building interaction
• sustainable cities and communities
• design
• prototypes
• methods
• architecture