The intensified indoor living during the spring 2020 lockdown, with enhanced user awareness of the prevailing conditions in their homes, constituted a natural stress test for the housing design in place today. Surveys conducted during this period have yielded lessons for designing better intervention strategies for the residential sector, taking into account the systematic morphological and economic limitations of the buildings concerned. These considerations should inform the development of policies and strategies for improving environmental quality compatible with lower residential energy consumption and higher quality of life. This study explores the effect of occupant behaviour on home ventilation and the perception of the impact of indoor air quality on user health before and during lockdown. The method deployed consisted in monitoring environmental variables and conducting user surveys before and after restrictions came into force. The findings showed that prior to lockdown, occupants were unaware of or paid little heed to changes in indoor air quality, failed to perceive stuffiness, and, as a rule, reported symptoms or discomfort only at night during the summer months. During lockdown, however, users came to attach greater importance to air quality, and a greater sensitivity to odours and a heightened awareness of CO₂ concentration prompted them to ventilate their homes more frequently. In the spring of 2020, occupants also indicated a wider spectrum of indisposition, in particular in connection with sleep patterns.

The required cooling energy in buildings exceeds 65% of the total energy consumed inside buildings under the extreme climatic conditions of Saudi Arabia. The proper design of buildings’ envelopes has a considerable potential in reducing such levels, especially in public buildings. The reported study evaluated the thermal performance of mosque buildings with focus on the solar gains through the envelope elements. Computer simulations were carried out using Thermal Analysis Software (TAS). In addition, the thermal and comfort votes of the worshippers in one mosque were collected. The findings revealed uncomfortable thermal conditions, especially during summer months. The required cooling energy ranged between 37% and 55% in the investigated mosques. Investigating the solar gains of the envelope elements of one mosque indicated that the roof is the largest contributor to solar gain, which highlights the potential for future research to explore new constructional alternatives with the aim of improving the roofs’ thermal performance.

Thermal comfort has a regional nature as it is affected by people’s climatic and cultural background. Under the extreme climate of Oman, the absence of local standards combined with the lack of thermal comfort studies in educational buildings, and the relatively long-time students spend daily in classrooms, highlights the importance of conducting such studies. In this research, the indoor and outdoor measurements of air temperature (T_a), globe temperature (T_g), relative humidity (RH), and air velocity (AV) were combined with the findings of four questionnaires distributed among female school students to explore their responses to the classrooms' thermal environments. The findings indicated that around 66–83% of the students expressed satisfaction with the thermal conditions in their classrooms with around 61–79% feeling comfortable. The neutral temperature was computed as 24.9 ± 2.48°C applying Griffiths’ method and a slope of 0.5/K. The acceptability limits for satisfaction levels of 80% and 90% were 23.3–26.6°C and 23.9–25.9°C, respectively. The research findings provide information that may be used to manage how the classrooms are managed in relation to the use of air conditioning and window opening, as well as valuable information about how the students adjust their clothing to maintain thermal comfort.