Analyzing Sick Building Syndrome in Architecture Studios of EMU

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is one of the important issues of our contemporary age where people are facing problems derived from buildings, and this issue is becoming an important concern especially in modern life due to its heavy consequences. SBS includes various general symptoms that affect the users of a building. The SBS effect can be seen on individuals as a group of symptoms which appear specifically at working places. Some of the common symptoms are headache; loss of concentration, runny nose, itching, dry skin and dry eyes. The most important characteristic of SBS is such that it is not always easy to recognize the problem and the lack of awareness amongst designers and users about SBS causes other problems like reducing of the productivity of the employees in a working place or learning capacity of students in an educational building. Recognizing and finding proper solutions for problems in sick buildings will help create healthy environments and lead to more productiveness at work, therefore it is important to be aware of the subject and take it serious specially at this modern era where these issues matters a lot. In this research, signs of SBS will be observed and analyzed in the Architectural Studios of EMU (A18, A27) as the case study of research because it is very important for an educational building to provide a healthy environment that students can perform better and have the maximum productivity. The methodology of research is a mix of qualitative and quantitative approach to collect required data. The aim is to find out if the users of studios are suffering from sick building syndrome effects and propose some possible solutions for their improvement. For this purpose, the named lecture/studio rooms of interior architecture have been analyzed with observations and questionnaires where possible factors leading to SBS has been pinned.. After collection of sufficient data and their analysis, the results showed that the building is suffering from SBS impacts; students were effected by some of SBS syndromes and it affected their performance and health conditions. Keywords: Educational Building, SBS, Health, User, EMU