Abstract:

Energy crisis recently became a crucial issue that matters all countries around the world and developing countries like Egypt particularly. The trend of energy saving became an important issue due to the international energy crisis, global warming and economic problems. Buildings that are not environmentally designed are a waste of resources, money and energy and they don’t perform their functions efficiently or effectively.

Multiple studies in the field of energy efficient and environmentally designed buildings have been held though studies about environmentally designed educational buildings are few. Educational Buildings in Egypt suffer great insufficiency in performing their educational functions due to their great need for energy which already face critical issues as well as the unhealthy indoor environment of them which negatively affect the students’ performance. The insufficiency of these buildings occurred because of their poor design that doesn’t consider environmental aspects and energy efficiency. Retrofitting existing educational buildings through environmental treatments as well as adopting environmental aspects in designing new educational buildings is an essential issue that is poorly investigated in Egypt.

The research studies the effectiveness of adopting the environmental design principles in educational buildings to improve the performance of them, as well as the effect of this design on the performance of the students. Moreover, it studies the effect of this on the educational process in open and closed spaces. The research methodology directly targets educational buildings retrofit and the environmental design of the newly built. The methodology pursues an analytical field survey of multiple educational buildings holding post occupancy questionnaire that reflects the effectiveness of applying environmental design principles to these buildings. Besides, the research analyses some experiences of international and local educational buildings assigning the negatives and positives of them. The research displays some international and local environmentally designed educational buildings that proved their effectiveness and efficiency.

Keywords:

Environmental design, building retrofit, educational buildings, educational effectiveness, students performance.