Shahab Aldin Siahposht - PhD in Architectural Engineering, Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch, Tehran,Iran,

Nowadays, the interior architecture of educational spaces is of particular importance, and the designers of art disciplines emphasize the design of educational spaces in accordance with their standards and uses, especially in art and architecture schools for learning and creating creativity in students. The use of educational spaces such as a college is a function of the students of the same college. Students understand the atmosphere of the college with this application. Recognizing students' needs is reflected in the design of the faculty environment. The purpose of this study is to explore the perception of students about aspects of academic building that affect their wellbeing. The study adopts focus group discussion using semi structured interview guide to elicit their responses. Six different groups of students participated in the study. Interviews were recorded using digital audio recorder and were later transcribed to text. The qualitative data obtained was analysed through content analysis. Six key themes that emerged from the analysis are: comfort; health and safety; access and quality of facilities; space provision and adequacy; participation and inclusiveness; interaction. These six items are considered as parameters that are important to students’ wellbeing in relation to academic buildings. The most emphasised aspects of academic building that are essential to meeting students need include thermal conditions, internet access, furniture, duration of access, availability of refreshment facilities, availability of discussion room and availability of personal workstation. This implies that facilities managers in higher education institutions should give adequate attention to these identified aspects of academic buildings as they can potentially affect students output.

Academic buildings, Facilities, Focus group, Students, Wellbeing.