Architectural Environmental Engineering

A general term for engineering fields related to the architectural environment. In order to maintain an appropriate environment for human life inside a building in a given climate and geography, it is first necessary to know the physical properties of the building, and so the fields include architectural heat transfer, architectural moisture, architectural ventilation, architectural acoustics, and architectural lighting. Because of the need to realize an appropriate environment, it includes the fields of heating and cooling, air conditioning, and water supply and drainage, and strives to achieve this through building facilities and control technology. Because of the need to evaluate suitability for human life, it includes the field of human physiology, which deals with comfort and discomfort related to heat, air, sound, and light, and the field of human psychology, which deals with feelings of openness and confinement. Overall, it is an academic field that evaluates appropriate indoor environments and investigates methods for realizing them.

Architectural environmental engineering is a relatively new term unique to Japan, and has recently begun to be used in Europe and the United States as well. In the 1870s, lectures on acoustics, ventilation and heating methods, and sanitary architecture were already being given at the Imperial College of Engineering, the predecessor to the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. After absorbing Western science and technology, the field of planning theory was established in the 1930s, and awareness of building equipment began to grow in the late 1940s. In 1965, planning theory and building equipment were combined to form the term architectural environmental engineering. In recent years, architectural environmental engineering has expanded from architecture to cities, including smoke prevention and evacuation engineering in the event of a building fire, and has begun to develop in a variety of ways in response to growing global environmental and energy issues.

[Yasuhito Nakamura]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

建築の環境にかかわる工学分野の総称。気候風土のもとにあって、建築物の内部で人間の生活にとって適正な環境を保つために、まず建築物の物理的性状を知る必要があることから、建築伝熱、建築湿気、建築換気、建築音響、建築照明の分野がある。適正な環境を実現する必要から、暖冷房、空気調和、給排水の分野を含み、建築設備を経て、制御の技術を用いて実現を図る。人間の生活にとって適正かどうかを評価する必要から、熱、空気、音、光に関する快・不快感を扱う人体生理の分野、開放感・閉鎖感を扱う人間心理の分野を含む。総括して室内の適正環境を評価し、それを実現するための方法を究明する学問分野である。

　建築環境工学は日本独特の比較的新しいことばで、最近は欧米でも使われるようになってきた。明治10年代に、東京大学工学部の前身である工部大学校ですでに音響学、通風および暖房の方法、衛生上の建築の講義が行われており、その後の欧米の科学・技術の吸収を経て、昭和10年代には計画原論という分野が確立し、昭和20年代の後半に建築設備の認識が高まり始め、1965年（昭和40）になって計画原論と建築設備とが合体する形で建築環境工学と総称されるようになった。近年は建物火災に伴っての防煙・避難工学を含み、世界的な環境問題、エネルギー問題の高まりを受けて建築環境工学は建築から都市にまで拡大し、多様な展開を始めている。

［中村泰人］

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