People Inside

The focus of the collegium is on the interaction of spaces and people. Up to now, research and application has mainly tried to improve the comfort for the room user.

However, a company is not exclusively interested in comfortable workplaces. Rather, its intention is to maximize the economic efficiency of the space by means of a well thought-out design of the rooms, i.e. to offer employees an environment in which they can work efficiently. For only the knowledge of the interaction between space and people allows to optimize working or room conditions in such a way that people can develop and maintain their full potential in the long term.

This is influenced by different aspects depending on the sector/activity. In call centers, for example, the challenge is to create optimal room acoustic conditions in order to achieve the best possible use of the available space.

But the influence of a room on customer behavior is also a focus of the investigations. In supermarket and jewelry store displays, on the other hand, professional lighting design is particularly important, which has a decisive effect on the assessment of products and thus on sales figures.

After all, since rooms that are too loud, warm or stuffy, for example, can exhaust the psychological resources of the users, it is important to optimally design building physics parameters such as noise, light, color, perceived air quality and heat.

Among the psychological factors investigated in this context are thought processes, emotions, motivation and behavioral regulation, which are important for the individual as well as for the interaction of people (in a team or in customer relations).