Buildings will have to be sustainable in ways other than just environmental, Glass for Europe’s Bertrand Cazes told delegates at the GPD conference.
The Secretary General said that while ensuring a building was sustainable was important, there must be a focus on the social and economic side as well.
He asked what does sustainability mean? It is viewed as the cross point between environmental, economic and social considerations.
In a 30 minute presentation which opened Day 2 of the Glass Performance Days event in Tampere, Finland he spoke about the glazed areas in sustainable buildings.
Glazing helps improve the wellbeing of the occupants of a building by increasing the amount of daylight inside the building.
He said studies have shown that daylight is linked to better health by bringing a visual connection to the outside world. Humans are essentially outdoor animals but today spend up to 80% of their time indoors.
The human body clock requires daily recalibration and needs to know when dawn and dusk are.
Daylight is essential for melatonin and serotonin to be produced at the right time of day. Mood swings and Seasonal Adjustment Disorder (SAD) are partly to do with daylight.
Similarly, healthcare research shows that patients in buildings where there is plenty of lights recover more quickly from an operation, while in education pupils with access to daylight tend to have improved concentration and learning capacities.
The results of the daylight findings are available via the Glass for Europe website.
A full report on the GPD conference, which will feature more of Mr Cazes’s presentation, will be published in a forthcoming issue of Glass International.
