Purdown View and Wallscourt Park: Energy, comfort and perception intercomparison

Full project title: Purdown View and Wallscourt Park: Energy, comfort and perception intercomparison – Partnership PhD

Duration: 1 October 2025 to 31 March 2029

Project lead for CESR: Dr Ben Williams 

Funders:

• JLL
• Stride Treglown

This PhD project, aims to seize a unique opportunity to conduct a comprehensive Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) study on a state-of-the-art Passivhaus certified student accommodation block, Purdown View and compare this against similar metrics to be gathered in ‘standard’ student accommodation blocks on Frenchay campus.

As the largest student accommodation received Passivhaus certificate in the UK, Purdown View Passivhaus presents an exceptional chance to study the in-use environmental comfort (temperature, humidity, acoustics, lighting and indoor environmental quality), the energy consumption, as well as the lived experience of end users. Benchmarking this against ‘standard’ accommodation provides an opportunity to highlight strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of both typologies.

As Passivhaus student accommodation is likely to become more prevalent in the future, this study is timely and holds great relevance for the field.

• Doctoral thesis (forthcoming)
• Publications (forthcoming)

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Ben Williams (ben3.williams@uwe.ac.uk).