Abstract
This study focuses on design tendencies in office buildings of public institutions after tightening up Korea's building energy performance criteria. Important office design criteria and recommendations pay attention to the issues such as building orientation, greening buildings, building form, space and envelop by intensifying building energy performance related laws, government guidelines and evaluation systems. The design tendencies explored in this research are as follows. Office buildings mainly face south and have various types of indoor and roof green spaces not for ecological reasons but for the rest. Building depth becomes thinner and atria are inserted into office buildings to improve daylighting and natural ventilation. Building cores are located on north or west and east sides acting as buffer spaces to reduce heat loss and to block solar radiation. Office building envelop design includes various creative ideas to control or utilize solar energy as like three dimensional or double structured skin and window size variation to cope with the intensity of solar radiation. Further, solar energy generation systems are integrated with building component such as roofs, sun screens and windows. This study demonstrates that government's reinforcement of the building energy performance criteria drives the change in design methods and approach.