Cooper, I (2009) Comfort in a brave new world. Building Research & Information, 37(1), pp. 95-100. ISSN 0961-3218
Abstract
This commentary scrutinizes Building Research Information's 2008 special issue titled 'Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society' from three vantage points. The first compares the special issue with another published on the same topic in 1982 in an attempt to see what differences a quarter of a century have brought to comfort-related research. The second seeks to identify what has been gained and lost as comfort research has moved away from the reductionist and positivistic certainties of 26 years ago towards the much more highly nuanced, historical, and social constructivist position reported in the 2008 special issue. And the third asks what would need to be done next to enable the more recent, adaptive, approach to modifying indoor climate to out-compete the engineering paradigm that has become so embedded and ingrained in professional practice over the past century. The commentary concludes with the challenge that unless this new, adaptive approach can rapidly become codified and enshrined in professional codes and standards - perhaps even in (inter)national regulations, it will not even be able to begin to operate as one of the building-related bulwarks against climate change.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | adaptive behaviour; agency; climate change; comfort; consumption; demand management; governance; lower carbon society; regulation |
| Index terms: | agency, paradigm, climate change, professional practice, governance, adaptive behaviour, building research, regulation, society, indoor climate, comfort, consumption, demand management |
| Subjects: | professional development, business, education and knowledge transfer, market analysis, sociology, human factors, consumer economics, occupational health and safety management, research management, environmental science, political science, communities and social development, climate science |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Research Practice, Information Management, Health and Safety, Engineering Principles, Stakeholder Management, Governance |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here