Re-contextualizing the notion of comfort

Abstract

To what extent can the urgency of climate change and an evolving concept of agency (at the individual and social levels of building users) create a new context for rethinking the notion of comfort? A new, emerging notion of comfort is explored that embraces engagement with new conditions, new experiences, and new types of interactions between inhabitants and building systems and unfamiliar technologies. The emphasis is on communication and dialogue as two dynamic and adaptive processes necessary to achieve optimal building performance while valuing and responding to inhabitant knowledge and agency, and enhancing indoor environmental quality from the standpoint of the inhabitants. A primary conclusion is that the goal of shifting into a lower carbon society has created a new context for comfort, from its conventional emphasis as automated, uniform and predictable, to a broader notion that takes into consideration dynamic, integrated, and participatory aspects. The key dimensions of this emergent broader view of comfort are examined and the relationships between them revealed.

A socio-technical approach to post-occupancy evaluation: interactive adaptability in domestic retrofit

“…Recent sociotechnical research in the built environment and retrofit has begun to draw attention to this issue (e.g. Cole et al, 2008;Foulds et al, 2013;Gram-Hanssen, 2010;Haines & Mitchell, 2014;Ingle, Moezzi, Lutzenhiser, & Diamond, 2014;Judson & Maller, 2014;Karvonen, 2013;Tweed, 2013;Shove et al, 2008;Vlasova & Gram-Hanssen, 2014). This movement and the limitations of current POE have precipitated the authors' explicit adoption of the socio-technical approach for the FLASH project.…”

“…In recontextualizing comfort, Cole et al (2008) came close to this mutuality by highlighting the possibility of interactive adaptation between occupants and new technology. Informed by social theorists' work on human agency (Bourdieu, 1977;Giddens, 1984;Habermas, 1989) they suggested that engagement, dialogue and communication at all stages are required to enable occupants to play an active role in operating increasingly complex systems associated with buildings.…”

“…Acknowledging agency and complexity, Cole et al (2008) presented a wider notion of comfort that included psychological and socio-cultural meanings as well as the physiological dimension of comfort. This in turn gave rise to the concept of 'interactive adaptation' between buildings and people.…”

“…Bordass and Leaman (1997) cautioned that the operation and management of complex technical systems is crucial for achieving optimal performance, and through the 1990s developed Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) (Cohen, Standeven, Bordass, & Leaman, 2001) as a systematic way to assess building performance and occupants' satisfaction. In recognition of the increasingly complex technologies installed in green buildings, Cole, Robinson, Brown, and O'Shea (2008) called for a more integrated approach to understanding the interactions between building inhabitants and new technologies, defining the process as 'interactive adaptation'. They suggested that the potential for and realization of 'interactive adaptivity' is critical for the design and development of green buildings.…”

“…Drawing on relevant ideas and concepts from social practice theory and science and technology studies, this paper demonstrates how the relationship between buildings and people could be reconceptualized. Within this framework, the concept of 'interactive adaptation' (Cole et al, 2008) is explored through an integration of physical and social data collected from a sample of dwellings selected from the RftF Programme.…”