Moezzi, M (2009) Are comfort expectations of building occupants too high? Building Research & Information, 37(1), pp. 79-83. ISSN 0961-3218
Abstract
The recent Building Research Information special issue titled 'Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society' has taken up, with subtlety and diversity, prospects for reducing the energy consumed in creating thermal comfort. As this excellent collection of papers shows, comfort quickly becomes 'about nearly everything', so the interdisciplinary discussions such as provided by the special issue are critical to understanding how comfort expectations and comfort provision might change. The following commentary draws out two lines of enquiry from this collection, both relating to everyday experiences of comfort and its acquisition. The first line explores evidence that people are not as thermally comfortable in their places of work as design values specify and as theory assumes. This leads to renewed questions about theory versus design, adaptation, relationships of thermal to other kinds of comfort, and expectations of workers as well as by them. More speculatively, it reflects briefly on how comfort works outside the workplace, in the car and finally at home. The second line explores the theme of expectations about proper conduct, energy-wise and otherwise, in an era of intensified climate change communications and conservation campaigns.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | adaptive behaviour; air-conditioning; climate change; comfort; occupant satisfaction; workplace |
| Index terms: | building research, society, adaptive behaviour, acquisition, adaptation, comfort, evidence, thermal comfort, occupant satisfaction, climate change, conservation |
| Subjects: | climate science, user focus, user-centered design, human factors, business, evaluation and assessment methods, environmental policy, environmental engineering, communities and social development, research management, occupational health and safety management |
| Topics: | Design Practice, Sustainability, Stakeholder Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Health and Safety, Business Strategy |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
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