End-user evaluation for human-oriented healthy and sustainable hospital design: Two case studies

OpenAlex İngilizce

Sustainability reveals the importance of efficiently managing building life cycle processes within the scope of contemporary solutions like the circular and green economies. These solutions take a wider perspective, also caring for ecosystem resilience and human wellbeing. Hospitals, which include large and diverse groups of end-users, must consider human welfare, a core green economy goal, alongside strict green building requirements. It is believed that designing truly sustainable and healthy hospitals requires prioritizing end-users’ health and wellbeing. This study investigates end-user perceptions of sustainability criteria within hospitals. It evaluates feedback from hospital end-users through two case studies. Data was collected from a total of 208 participants via a survey based on LEED v4 BD+C: Healthcare requirements, targeting long-term and short-term end-users in medium and large-scale hospitals. To calculate the average importance score for each statement according to the total number of responses, the index value based ranking method was used. The findings reveal that while both long-term and shortterm hospital end-users prioritized criteria related to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), their specific expectations varied according to the scale of the hospitals. When considering the opinions of short-term and long-term hospital users, it was found that short-term users prioritized the IEQ and Energy and Atmosphere (EA) categories, while long-term users focused more on the IEQ, Sustainable Sites (SS), and Material and Resources (MR) categories. These findings suggest that sustainable hospital designs should consider both end-user perspective and hospital scales. The findings aim to support the design of healthier healthcare buildings and contribute to the ongoing refinement of green building certification standards.