RISUD Research Seminar: Rethinking Building Performance in a Changing World: A Human–Building Interaction Perspective

Climate change and the energy transition are transforming the conditions under which buildings are designed, operated, and evaluated. Building performance is increasingly shaped not only by technological characteristics, but also by continuous interactions between occupants, buildings, and changing external conditions.

This presentation introduces Human–Building Interaction (HBI) as a research perspective for understanding these dynamic relationships and their implications for building performance. Research conducted at the Intelligent Human–Buildings Interaction Lab at Umeå University illustrates this perspective through human–building experiments, studies of occupant responses to energy-efficiency interventions and thermal extremes, and data-driven modelling and visualization. Together, these studies examine how changes in buildings and external conditions influence occupant perception, behaviour, and adaptation, and how these responses in turn affect building performance. The presentation concludes with ongoing research on psychological well-being under extreme weather conditions and LLM-supported modelling of household responses to emerging energy-transition policies.

Biography

Prof. LU Weizhuo

Professor, Department of Applied Physics and Electronics;
Director of the Intelligent Human-Buildings Interaction Lab (IHBI),
Umeå University, Sweden

Prof. LU Weizhuo is a Professor of Sustainable Built Environment at Umeå University, Sweden, and the founding director of the Intelligent Human–Buildings Interaction (IHBI) Lab. His research centres on Human–Building Interaction and the role of occupants in shaping building performance under changing climate and energy conditions. He has led numerous national and international research projects and developed the IHBI Lab into an interdisciplinary research environment. He was named a Future Research Leader by Formas, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development. The IHBI Lab was selected for the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences’ IVA 100 list in recognition of its potential to contribute to innovation and societal development in the built environment.