Integrating Sustainability and Users’ Demands in the Retrofit of a University Campus in China

Abstract

Green retrofit is essential for the sustainable development of Chinese Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Limited by time and cost, a campus retrofit plan needs to consider both sustainability principles and usage demands to set feasible priorities. By integrating usage demands with sustainability principles, this paper aims to observe the relationship between the sustainability assessment tool (SAT) indicators of campus retrofit and users’ needs in this process. The Chinese official SAT for campuses was combined with the campus environment components from six investigated HEIs, and then processed by a group of 15 members to establish an implementable framework of retrofit objectives. Taking the Weijin Campus of Tianjin University as an example, feedback from 432 users on the sample environment was analyzed according to our framework. The results show the difference between the users’ perspective and sustainability indicators, emphasizing the importance of the sustainable development of HEIs and leading to the implementation of measures to improve sustainability awareness and guide a retrofit.