Introducing the qualitative performance gap: Stories about a sustainable building

In the design and operations industries, the performance gap is a common discrepancy found between predicted building energy performance and actual energy performance. The performance gap is considered to have negative impacts for the brand of 'green' buildings, designers and operators. A socially based analogue is proposed here: the qualitative performance gap, defined as the perceived gap between what inhabitants expect and their actual experience of the building environment. This concept is explored at a regenerative Living Lab: the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) in Vancouver, Canada. 'Official' and 'lived' stories about the building were interpreted from sources of building information and interviews. Expectations about and forgiveness of building performance were gained from pre- and post-occupancy evaluations and interviews. The solution to the qualitative performance gap is not to eliminate it, but, in line with the concept of interactive adaptivity, to use the gap to generate new stories and new consequences for human wellbeing. The qualitative performance gap is thus conceived as positively generative, of new stories of place and identity. This work recommends crafting an 'official story' of social aspirations, and a communication feedback loop amongst designers, operators and building inhabitants, transparently sharing successes and failures.