Creating Office Spaces in the Mediterranean. The importance of well-being, health and performance of office users

Recent research has studied the influence of office buildings indoor environment quality (IEQ) on employees' well-being, health and performance. However, it seems that it has not been explicitly explored what are the appropriate environmental conditions to different work patterns that coexist in these spaces. This paper presents results of an empirical research, based on the synchronized measurements of different IEQ parameters (i.e., noise, lighting and temperature), and well-being, health and performance of 71 employees in twelve office spaces in the Valencian Community along three periods, considering winter and summer conditions. Findings of the first winter period data, suggest the existence of different ideal parameters for different levels of task complexity (one of the dimensions that characterizes work patterns) in the Mediterranean climate; and open new avenues of research to build up a specific Smart and Sustainable Offices (SSO) model and further systemic design-support tools.