Current Ventilation And Air Quality Problems Against Historical Solutions

The paper describes the issue of ventilation and air quality in buildings with reference to regular tightening of heating standards. The purpose of the work is to show the risks related to excessive insulation of buildings, which is thought to have a negative influence on users’ well-being and health. The development of issues related to thermal comfort has often led to erroneous solutions. As a result, problems such as “Sick Building Syndrome” and “Building Related Illness” has developed in the recent history, whereas in the long history of the ‘art of construction’, there existed a number of solutions beneficial for users’ health. This issue serves as a pretext for the presentation of former solutions, gradually improved on the basis of the observation of nature, physical phenomena, predecessors’ experiences, creative thinking and intuition. They were used for ages and have become a basis for today’s architectural solutions, although some of them have been forgotten or eliminated by higher and higher normative requirements. In the paper, the author asks the following research question: Do modern legal instruments and standards provide an effective guarantee of high quality of internal air and heat comfort of buildings? Is there an alternative development path for these issues?