Passive designs in sustaining natural ventilation in school office buildings in Seremban, Malaysia

Natural ventilation is believed to be capable of enhancing indoor air quality through proper passive designs. However, most modern buildings today still depend heavily on artificial ventilation for their daily operations. The current study aims to identify the extent of passive designs that correlate to the thermal comfort satisfaction levels and user expectation on utilization. Feedbacks from respondents in selected primary school offices were collected and analyzed. Pearson’s or the Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient analysis was used to justify the extent of correlation between the key parameters. The key parameters involved consisted of both physical and non-physical factors which influence human responses to the changes in the surrounding environment. The findings of this study indicate that the paired comparison between passive design, satisfaction levels, and estimation from the occupants have weak correlations, and thus, this means that the applicability of passive design should be further integrate with other influencing parameters in order to intensify the application of natural ventilation in office buildings in the near future.