Subjective experience and visual attention to a historic building:A real-world eyetracking study

The objective of this exploratory study is to discover the relations between visual attention to an architectural work and the subjective experiences produced during its observation.A subjective experience with a building is the specific manner in which an architectural element or the building as a whole are presented to a person.The qualities of the element as how they are perceived and the inner world of the observer are both considered in this subjective experience.The aims of this study are to describe the experience that a building generates in people,pinpoint what has attracted the participant's attention during each view of the building in an itinerary;and understand which aspects of this selected case study have made it an object of attend on.An eye-tracking study was carried out using a portable eye tracker.This tool allowed the participants to walk freely around the exterior of a historic train station in the city of Monterrey,Mexico.Two groups of participants,with routes starting from opposite sides of the building,contemplated it while using the eye tracker.Eye tracking allowed for the identification of the architectural elements that were objects of attention,the lengths of observation,and the points of view from which the elements were observed.Other data collection techniques,such as the think-aloud protocol and a special type of survey,were used to deeply understand the experiences that accompanied the visual exploration of the historic building.Results suggest that the participants observed the different architectural elements for a time that was neither influenced by the route used to explore the building nor the point where that route was initiated.The architectural elements identified as examples of high-quality architecture and perceived as aesthetically pleasing by the participants during the itinerary were observed for longer times.

Comparison study of thermal comfort and energy saving under eight different ventilation modes for space heating

The relative location of inlets and outlets plays an important role in thermal comfort and energy conservation under ventilation modes for the building non-uniform indoor environment.Hence,a comparison study of thermal comfort and energy efficiency of eight widely-used ventilation modes for space heating was conducted in this study.Both subjective experiments and verified computational fluid dynamics(CFD)models were carried out.In the subjective experiments,the vote of local thermal sensation(LTS),overall thermal sensation(OTS)and draft sensation were collected.In the CFD simulations,RNG κ-ε model was applied to compare and analyze the air temperature field,turbulence intensity,ventilation effectiveness and air diffusion performance index(ADPI).The thermal comfort results showed that the air inlets are better located at the mid-height level of a wall,and the outlets are located at the same or higher height.While the results of the energy efficiency suggested that the inlets are better installed at the lower level of a wall,and the outlets should be placed far from the inlets.Since the results were conflict,the economic-comfort ratio was introduced to calculate and compare the thermal comfort and energy efficiency simultaneously.The final results concluded that it can achieve excellent thermal comfort performance without sacrificing energy efficiency when the inlets are at the height of 1.2 m of the front wall,and the outlets are at 1.2 m height of the back wall.Hence it is the best choice for the winter air distribution in northern China.This study can offer a guideline for the air terminal arrangements in non-uniform ventilation under heating mode.