OCCUPANTS' COMFORT IN RETAIL BUILDINGS: A REVIEW

In the bid to improve occupants' thermal comfort while still minimizing energy usage, retailbuildings have been undergoing transformations. New trends in retail building design can benoticed globally, from the adoption of day lighting to the incorporation of natural ventilation. Itwould be expected that these new trends in retail building design would attract research studiesfocused on users' comfort, perceptions and expectation. However, in recent years, comfortstudies in retail buildings have focused mainly on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), visual and acousticcomfort. Though, few studies have been done with in-depth evaluation of the thermal comfortconditions in retail buildings in particular. There is a need to have a compilation and review ofthese studies in order to encourage more studies to be done and to bring awareness to the issueof sustainability in retail buildings. This paper is thus a review of some of such studies. Relevantliterature was search on popular easily assessable research databases (Google scholar,Scopus, and Science Direct.) this was done using appropriate keywords, and articles related tothe Occupants' comfort in retail buildings were finally selected and reviewed for this study.Although, concerns were raised concerning the practicability of natural ventilation and othersustainable measures to achieve adequate comfort in large retail buildings, some studies havehowever revealed that natural ventilation has a great application potential in large retailbuildings.