Adaptive Thermal Comfort by Roaf, Susan; Nicol, Fergus; Humphreys, Michael;

Short description:

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.

Long description:

To remain comfortable in a world of evermore 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.

“Even as the climate warms, so too does the debate about thermal comfort in buildings. ‘At the Extremes’  is appropriately hard-hitting and insightful—a true guide for hotter times ahead”. 

Jonathon Porritt, writer and campaigner, President of The Conservation Volunteers and Population Matters

“We can’t air-condition our way out of the climate crisis—this book is an essential manifesto for designing a resilient future, showing how our bodies, buildings, and cultures must adapt to a heating world.” 

Prashant Kapoor, Chief Industry Specialist, Green Buildings and Cities, Climate Business Department, IFC

"This is a truly stupendous piece of work covering all dimensions of the question of thermal comfort in buildings –historical time, location, built space and the challenge of Climate Change. A must read for designers and researchers for an urgently needed 'reset' for theory and practice."

Ashok Lall, Principal of Ashok B Lall Architects, Delhi, India

"How wonderful to read a book on science that is written so clearly: for in a time of adjustment we need plain speaking… As Sue Roaf says: 'the first step to escaping from an echo chamber is to realise that you are in one.' May this book assist you to thrust the window of your enclosed space wide open and brave this world which created you – if you can find one that opens!"

Phil Harris, Troppo Architects

"Many congratulations on this new book. It's brimming with ideas related to radically cutting carbon in the face of the drastic rates of climate change we are now caught in."

Aubrey Meyer, The Global Commons Institute, UK

"Adaptive Thermal Comfort: At the Extremes is a provocative reading of how comfort has been defined, captured, codified, exported and enforced in our built environment—with highly uncomfortable results for our heating world. We are honored that our projects have been identified as exemplars for localized, adaptable and culturally attuned comfort. This book is a necessary critique of how we got here and offers actionable suggestions for designers, professionals and policy-makers moving forward."

Richard Hassell, WOHA, Singapore

Table of Contents:

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