The intent of this report is to distinguish the significance of interiors to obtain social sustainability in office environments as well as identifying selected environmental rating systems’ weaknesses and strengths concerning the inclusion of social criteria. To conduct the study an extensive literature study and several interviews have taken place. The study has resulted in 45 different criteria, which all are significant to obtain in a social sustainable office environment. To make the results easier to understand and interpret they are presented graphically with a custom designed tool, titled Duis Socialis. Using this tool, the criteria for social sustainability are presented along with the results from the review of the environmental rating systems. The results of this study shows that the environmental rating systems have a predominance towards the technical criteria in comparison with the criteria concerning sociology, culture and equality. This trend is most likely a consequence of the technical criteria being easier to quantify as well as containing distinguishable exposure-response relationships. The one criterion that could be identified in all of the environmental rating systems was Toxic-free materials. This is most likely because it is easy to quantify and is an important criterion seen from an environmental point of view. Six criteria were not identified in any of the systems: Power structures, Gender neutrality, Open spaces, Orderliness, Physically attractive interiors and Viable technology. None of the reviewed environmental rating systems do a clear attempt to include social sustainability, with the exception of WELL Building Standard. WELL Building Standard: New and Existing Interiors and WELL Building Standard: New and Existing Buildings were the environmental rating systems that fulfilled the most criteria. This may be because WELL Building Standard focusses on health and well-being instead of being a pure environmental rating system. Also, WELL Building Standard has been used to help identify the social criteria used in this study. The system that fulfilled least criteria was BASTA, it only fulfilled Toxic-free materials. This is because BASTA has a clearly stated focus on toxic-free materials and nothing else. The results of this study aim to increase the awareness of social sustainability and are by the authors of this report seen as a first step in the process. In the future the authors believe in the introduction of sustainability rating systems and sustainability certifications in which the economic, ecologic and social dimensions of sustainable development are included.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-189129 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Strajnar, Linda, Sundström, Linn |
| Publisher | KTH, Industriell ekologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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