Adaptive Thermal Comfort

At the Extremes

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Building Design is at a crossroads in our heating world. Today many modern buildings fail to keep their occupants comfortable during more extreme weather. A revolution in design thinking is essential as we prepare for the even worse climates of the future with new ways of staying affordably and thermally safe and healthy indoors. This book is a compendium of information on thermal comfort in buildings. It provides a clear overview of the complexity of the challenges faced in reducing energy use in buildings and emissions from them in humanities' multitude of different cultures and climates. Buildings are a major and growing driver of climate change not least because of the global trend towards an overdependence on mechanical systems to provide comfort indoors. European and American industries have used international standards and regulations to persuade legislators around the world that 'Western' conditions for comfort are universally correct and are essential for the buildings of those committed to being part of global markets. That focus on mechanical efficiency has resulted in decades of buildings that are increasingly poorly adapted to local climates and lifestyles and are unable to protect occupants when electricity grids fail. Buildings in the future will have to run for as long as possible on local natural energy and this book outlines how that modal shift forwards to hybrid or mixed-mode buildings might happen and how low-cost and low-impact comfort can be achieved through good basic design that can also provide high amenity value and thermal delight in and around buildings. The theory of Adaptive Thermal Comfort states that people adapt to those temperatures they normally occupy, and if they become uncomfortable due to a change in conditions they tend to change themselves, or their surroundings to return to comfort if they are able and can afford to. 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. It builds on the authors global perspectives and experiences to lend shape to an emerging roadmap for re-imagining the design and construction of adaptable and resilient buildings, and a re-shaping of the expectations and behavioural lifestyle changes needed to prepare humanity to survive and thrive comfortably in the very different weather and climates ahead.

Weniger Details

Susan Roaf is Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering at Heriot Watt University. Raised in Malaysia and the Australian bush, and educated in Britain, she has lived and worked as an architect, anthropologist and archaeologist in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, California and Antarctica, experiences that colour her unique understanding of buildings and comfort in different climates and cultures and inspired her work on adapting buildings and cities to a heating world. She pioneered UK building integrated solar technologies and eco-design, and with Nicol and Humphreys has promoted adaptive thermal comfort globally. Her expertise in ancient technologies informed some of her 23 books and other publications, all aimed at understanding building performance in the past, present and future. Fergus Nicol is an award winning leader in the field of adaptive thermal comfort, having started as a physicist at the Building Research Establishment in the 1960s. He moved on to work with the UK Medical Research Council, and into teaching, before leaving both to start the radical book shop Bookmarks. Returning to research in 1992, he is now an Emeritus Professor in a number of universities, and a top cited scholar across his many publications. He led influential pan-European and Pakistan studies on comfort and he leads the NCEUB, Network for Comfort and Energy use in Buildings. He co-founded and ran the Windsor Conferences on comfort and is internationally respected for his support of fellow researchers and students. Michael Humphreys is known for his pioneering work on the adaptive approach to comfort. He was Head of Human Factors at the Building Research Establishment, and has been a Research Professor at Oxford Brookes University. His scientific interests are the methodology of field studies of environmental comfort, the structure and statistical modelling of human adaptive behaviour, and the interactions between the several aspects of the indoor environment.