A HYPERTEXTUAL TOOL FOR COMFORT DESIGN Marco Filippi, Arianna Astolfi, Gabriele Piccablotto Dipartimento di Energetica, Politecnico di Torino Torino, Italy ABSTRACT Environmental comfort is usually overlooked during both the design and the construction of a building. This may be due to inadequate understanding of the subject on the part of designers and builders, or to a lack of information concerning predictive design methods, the extent to which comfort requirements can be included in the contract specifications, and the methods and tools available for checking whether the results expected are achieved. A hypertextual tool devised to familiarise architects with the issues relating to the quality of an indoor environment is presented. Reference has been made to the latest rational theories about thermal, visual, acoustic and olfactory comfort in the preparation of data packages that are easy to consult in accordance with a hypertext logic, and are coupled with congruent calculation routines related to these theories for the execution of design and checking operations. User-friendly visualisation of the results has been adopted to make the comfort index data easier to understand. 1. INTRODUCTION The ISO 9000 standards state that the quality of a building can be considered as the sum of the properties and characteristics that enable it to satisfy the needs of its occupant. Primary importance is thus attached to the quality of an environment, this being understood as the set of properties and characteristics through which it meets an occupant's thermal, visual, acoustic and olfactory comfort requirements. Despite its decisive influence on an occupant's assessment of the acceptability of the confined space in which he lives or works, however, this quality is usually overlooked during both the design and the construction of a building. This may be due to inadequate understanding of the subject on the part of designers and builders, or to a lack of information concerning predictive design methods, the extent to which comfort requirements can be included in the contract specifications, and the methods and tools available for checking whether the results expected are achieved. We have been for some time engaged on an applied research project designed to provide cognitive, procedural and operating tools to serve the building process, especially in the design and works inspection stages, and to render those engaged in this process aware of the ways and means by which environmental comfort can be concretely designed and measured. 1