The new Interdisciplinary Facility for Indoor Air Quality and Health Research, also referred to as INTERIORS, will sit within the University of York’s Campus East and will become a world-leading facility for the study of indoor air quality, shaping how homes of the future are built.

The project, designed by GSSArchitecture, will see the construction of two identical residential properties, one of which will be built to Passivhaus standards and the other to 1990s UK Building Regulations standards. Acting as typical three-bedroom houses, these two-storey dwellings with semi-open plan living on the ground floor will include a living room, kitchen, WC., three bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway/lobby. Both properties are to be linked by a central single-storey laboratory facility which will offer space for scientists to measure how everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning and DIY affect the quality of the air we breathe at home.

The aim of building these two identical houses, but with differing standards, is to better understand how the airtightness and thermal performance of a building impact the quality of indoor air. Passivhaus refers to buildings that are built to undergo extremely energy efficient standards that go above and beyond the typical UK Building Regulations standards. The laboratory will therefore be able to gain a better understanding of the impact ventilation has on different properties for indoor air quality research.