Adaptive Thermal Comfort

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The book explains how comfort is ultimately the result of a conversation between people and their environments. This is the third of three volumes that builds on the practical and theoretical foundations of the subject laid out in the first two volumes.

To remain comfortable in a world of ever more extreme weather events and climate trends, we need a building revolution. Building designers, owners, managers, and occupants must prepare now for future climates with new ways to stay comfortable indoors. This book is a compendium of information on comfort that provides an overview of the complexity of the many ways that comfort is achieved in buildings. It outlines the impacts and implications of current design practices on greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and the health and well-being of people in them. In reality, many modern buildings, and particularly homes, are already failing in various ways. During extreme weather events, they overheat. During power outages, many buildings do not even remain habitable. During the COVID pandemic, cross-infections between occupants were rife in buildings like hospitals and hotels without opening windows. As energy prices soared and globally economies flatlined, many found themselves unable to pay for high-cost comfort solutions and so either had to change their lifestyles and expectations or learn to live with discomfort. Underlying many of the growing global problems is the trend towards an overdependence on mechanical systems to produce comfort, coupled with a decrease in the passive climatic performance of the buildings themselves. Both factors are resulting in a generation of increasingly un-resilient buildings.

The theory of adaptive thermal comfort states that people adapt to those temperatures they normally occupy, and if they become uncomfortable, they tend to change themselves or their surroundings to return to comfort, if they are able or can afford to. This is the third of three volumes, which builds on the practical and theoretical foundations of the subject laid out in the first two volumes. It builds on their premises to shape a new and better roadmap going forward for imagining, designing, and constructing adaptable buildings, and for the behavioural lifestyle changes needed to prepare humanity to survive and thrive comfortably in the very different weather and climates ahead.

Obsah

DEDICATION

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

COMFORT IN BUILDINGS

Chapter 1. Designing for Comfort at the Extremes

Chapter 2. Dangerous Curves: The Overheating Buildings Problem

PEOPLE AND COMFORT

Chapter 3. How Bodies Adapt

Chapter 4. How People Adapt

BUILDINGS AND COMFORT

Chapter 5. How People Adapt in Buildings

Chapter 6. Comfort Clouds

COMFORT AND CULTURES

Chapter 7. Comfort, Cultures, and Customs

Chapter 8. Comfort Colonialism

THERMAL HEARTBEATS OF BUILDINGS

Chapter 9. The Thermal Heartbeats of Buildings

Chapter 10. Killer Buildings: Heatwaves

Chapter 11. Killer Buildings: Cold

ECOLOGY AND COMFORT

Chapter 12. Ecology of Comfort

Chapter 13. Heat Flows and Ecological Engineering

Chapter 14. Harvesting Comfort From Landscapes

Chapter 15. Mining Comfort From the Earth

Chapter 16. Thermal Mass and Comfort

Chapter 17. Harvesting Comfort From Sky Cycles

Chapter 18. Air, Radiation, and Comfort

Chapter 19. Thermal Landscaping of Buildings

DESIGNING FOR A HOTTER CLIMATE

Chapter 20. Reconnecting Designers to Climates

Chapter 21. Firmness, Commodity, and Delight

Chapter 22. Designing Thermally Well-Behaved Buildings

Chapter 23. Thermal Delight in Design

COMFORT AND WELLBEING

Chapter 24. Comfort and Well-Being: Physical Health

Chapter 25. Well-Being: All About the Mind

Chapter 26. Emotional Comfort and Social Well-Being

Chapter 27. Spiritual Comfort and Beliefs

Chapter 28. Adaptable Buildings = Adaptive Comfort

APPENDICES