Abstract
Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) has multiple aspects such as: Indoor air quality (IAQ), acoustics, thermal conditions, lighting, and ventilation. This research focuses on Indoor air quality and acoustics and studies the effect of interior living walls on Indoor air quality and acoustical characteristics of rooms through field monitoring and experiment. Previous laboratory studies have been carried out at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) on the effect of living walls on acoustics and Indoor air quality. This study, examines the acoustical effect of living walls (background noise level, reverberation time, and speech articulation) as well as the effect of living walls on Indoor air quality (Carbon Dioxide, Volatile Organic Compound, and endotoxin) through field measurements in the BC Hydro Theater at the Centre for Interactive Research in Sustainability (CIRS) at UBC. Existing predictive models are verified using field data, and are used to predict the effect of interior living walls on Indoor air quality and acoustics in an adjoining lab.