Comfort paradigms & practices

1. Comfort paradigms & practices Heather Chappells & Elizabeth Shove Lancaster University Department of Sociology

2. Meanings of ‘comfort’ • A physical condition, a feeling of contentment or a sense of well-being • Changing associations over time (e.g. fresh air school or ac office) • Cultural diversity (from 6 to 31 degrees C)

4. Physiological Protected indoor environments People as passive bodies with fixed needs Standardised conditions (22OC) - thermal monotony Natural climate as the enemy of human productivity - a threat to be kept at bay

5. Adaptive Variable indoor environments Self-regulating and active bodies Indoor conditions that ‘float’ with external conditions and permit a variety of experience Modify the external climate: mediate and transform but not exclude

6. Social convention Mediated indoor environments People as social beings Thermal needs & indoor conditions defined by socio-cultural and socio-technical worlds in which they are constructed and reproduced From 6 to 30 degrees C

7. Comfort ‘making’ today • Architects, services engineers, building regulators, air-conditioning manufacturers, property developers, facilities managers • How different ideas about comfort inform processes of decision-making and how these become embodied in particular buildings, environments or spaces. • The entire system of comfort-making: from concept through design, specification, construction, use, maintenance & evaluation

8. Key issues • How and why have meanings & expectations of comfort changed & with what implications for living & working conditions? • How have standards and regulations promoted and stabilised certain meanings of comfort and modes of comfort provision? • How have different expectations of comfort influenced the ways in which buildings are constructed and used? • How might more sustainable interpretations of comfort take root in the context of climate change?

9. Meanings of comfort We see comfort as being a broader issue than just thermal, that doesn’t mean that we can assess all those other issues equally as well but at least it means that we recognise that it might mean more than air temperature or radiant temperature. We understand that there are a number of theories of comfort out there and that thermal comfort is just one of a number of parameters to be considered. We understand that comfort is physiological and psychological and we try wherever possible to be as adventurous with both or consider both. Extract from interview with Building Engineer

10. Changing user expectations of comfort • Extension of air-conditioning to all realms of life - cars, shops & offices • Expectation of domestic cooling as part of this trend - changing expectation of what comfort is in homes • Policy makers legitimising air-conditioning through promoting efficiency

11. Comfort standards If you take an air-conditioned building you would generally have a specification which would be following the British Council of Offices which is pretty rigid or CIBSE, so you would look at standards and I don’t think there’s a lot of debate about that. The debate comes when you say ‘well we’re not going to air condition’ or ‘we’re going to do a mixed-mode building which will float’, what will people put up with? Extract from interview with building engineer

12. Diminishing flexibility COMFORT-MAKING TOOLKIT Client expectations Building codes Perceived user needs Designer experiences Social conventions Technical standards Natural ventilation ‘Looser’ criteria 28 degrees OK Mechanical control ‘Tight’ criteria 22 degrees C Mixed-mode

13. There comes a point in any construction phase where you stop dithering and contemplating you’re options and you go for a specific option. And once you’ve got to that stage you can’t suddenly say ‘lets go nat vent’ once you’ve made decisions…I think you’ll find that there are some very fundamental choices about the form of a building that are made and once you’ve made them you can’t flip from one to the other…You know if you’re going to have lots of operable windows you’re going to have a different [thermal] mass than a building you’re trying to isolate Extract from interview with building engineer

14. Diversity in expectation • Diverse expectations of comfort associated with different environments (e.g.schools, homes, hospitals, offices, trains) • Influences levels of precision & control required (scope for individual or collective thermal regulation) • Cultural norms and conventions limiting diversity

15. Responding to climate change • Redefining standards • Reinventing air-conditioning • Re-evaluating ways of life

16. Providing prescribed comfortable & healthy conditions More precision & reinvention of ‘comfort cooling’ More efficient air-conditioning Comfort as alleviation of discomfort Specifying the ‘adaptive range’ NV exemplars & adaptive standards Questioning legitimacy of contemporary social/building conventions Opening new conversations about comfort Promote diversity in meanings, experiences and expectations

17. Future Comforts • Comfortable indoor environments a product of specific contexts in which they are defined, evaluated & achieved • Different socio-technical trajectories but directions taken will depend on the dominance of certain actors in shaping expectations & norms • Danger of lock-in especially given longevity of buildings

18. Issues to explore... • How different paradigms are inscribed in buildings of today? • What might prevent increasing reliance on energy-intensive methods of indoor climate control? • Are indoor climates converging around the world and around whose ideas or models of comfort? • What might it take to redefine current standards as unacceptable for human well-being? • How might new vocabularies of comfort and methods of calculation take root?