Comfort and Perception in Architecture

Comfort and Perception in Architecture
Author: J. Alstan Jakubiec
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-01-02
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9789811017735

This book discusses the design of comfortable buildings and shows that design perception and, as a result, comfort should be an intentional feature of architectural design. Modern buildings are often sealed boxes without operable windows or daylighting design. However, contemporary designers increasingly find themselves faced with the task of creating spaces that are comfortable in terms of thermal and visual aspects.

Indoor Thermal Comfort Perception

Indoor Thermal Comfort Perception
Author: Kristian Fabbri
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-10-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9783319366265

Providing a methodology for evaluating indoor thermal comfort with a focus on children, this book presents an in-depth examination of children’s perceptions of comfort. Divided into two sections, it first presents a history of thermal comfort, the human body and environmental parameters, common thermal comfort indexes, and guidelines for creating questionnaires to assess children’s perceptions of indoor thermal comfort. It then describes their understanding of the concepts of comfort and energy, and the factors that influence that perception. In this context, it takes into account the psychological and pedagogical aspects of thermal comfort judgment, as well as architectural and environmental characteristics and equips readers with the knowledge needed to effectively investigate children’s perspectives on environmental ergonomics. The research field of indoor thermal comfort adopts, on the one hand, physical parameter measurements and comfort indexes (e.g. Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) or adaptive comfort), and on the other, an ergonomic assessment in the form of questionnaires. However the latter can offer only limited insights into the issue of comfort, as children often use different terms than adults to convey their experience of thermal comfort. The books aims to address this lack of understanding with regard to children’s perceptions of indoor thermal comfort. The book is intended for HVAC engineers and researchers, architects and researchers interested in thermal comfort and the built environment. It also provides a useful resource for environmental psychologists, medical and cognitive researchers.

PERCEPTION in Architecture

PERCEPTION in Architecture
Author: Miriam Mlecek
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015-02-27
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1443875740

Definitions of space are as diverse as the disciplines in which it plays a fundamental role; from science and philosophy to art and architecture, each field’s perception of space is often simplified or reduced. This consequently denies access to ‘new spaces’, whose definitions and perspectives, strategies and impacts on human perception are rarely considered in any cohesive manner. This is where the Aedes Network Campus Berlin (ANCB) programme ‘No Space Without Traits’ came in: particularly through artistic approaches, it aimed to open doors into spatial worlds that until now have remained closed. The symposium ‘PERCEPTION in Architecture. HERE and NOW’ was part of this programme and invited critical and comprehensive contributions by academics, artists, architects, designers and curators. These presentations are brought together in this volume to reflect upon new spatial concepts and thus access ‘new spaces’ of perception in architecture. The symposium stimulated a discourse focused on spaces as a collective entity, notions of spatial truth, the multiplicity of experience, and Wahrnehmnungsapparate, as well as physical, visual, acoustic and virtual manifestations of space in relation to social, cultural, historical and political forces.

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture
Author: C. Alan Short
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2017-01-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317658698

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture challenges the modern practice of sealing up and mechanically cooling public scaled buildings in whichever climate and environment they are located. This book unravels the extremely complex history of understanding and perception of air, bad air, miasmas, airborne pathogens, beneficial thermal conditions, ideal climates and climate determinism. It uncovers inventive and entirely viable attempts to design large buildings, hospitals, theatres and academic buildings through the 19th and early 20th centuries, which use the configuration of the building itself and a shrewd understanding of the natural physics of airflow and fluid dynamics to make good, comfortable interior spaces. In exhuming these ideas and reinforcing them with contemporary scientific insight, the book proposes a recovery of the lost art and science of making naturally conditioned buildings.

Thermal Delight in Architecture

Thermal Delight in Architecture
Author: Lisa Heschong
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 100
Release: 1979-12-05
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262580397

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design. Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight about which rituals have developed—reinforcing bonds of affection and ceremony forged in the thermal experience. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms. This book for the solar age could help change all that and open up for us a new dimension of architectural experience. As the cost of energy continues to skyrocket, alternatives to the use of mechanical force must be developed to meet our thermal needs. A major alternative is the use of passive solar energy, and the book will provide those interested in solar design with a reservoir of ideas.

On Discomfort

On Discomfort
Author: David Ellison
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317085876

Examining discomfort’s physical, emotional, conceptual, psychological and aesthetic dimensions, the contributors to this volume offer an alternate, cultural approach to the study of architecture and the built environment. By attending to a series of disparate instances in which architecture and discomfort intersect, On Discomfort offers a fresh reading of the negotiations that define architecture’s position in modern culture. The essays do not chart comfort’s triumph so much as discomfort’s curious dispersal into practices that form ‘modern life’ – and what that dispersion reveals of both architecture and culture. The essays presented in this volume illuminate the material culture of discomfort as it accrues to architecture and its history. This episodic analysis speaks to a range of disciplinary fields and interdisciplinary subjects, extending our understanding of the domestication of interiors (and objects, cities and ideas); and the conditions under which – by intention or accident – they discomfort.

Experiencing Architecture, second edition

Experiencing Architecture, second edition
Author: Steen Eiler Rasmussen
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1964-03-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262680028

A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”

Reviewing Design Process Theories

Reviewing Design Process Theories
Author: Mahmud Rezaei
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 79
Release: 2020-11-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030619168

This interdisciplinary book explores design theories, combining research from a range of fields including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, urban design, industrial design, software engineering, environmental psychology, geography, anthropology, and sociology. Following an extensive review of the current literature, the author reveals eight major types of theory in design processes. The theories are classified as follows: Rational vs. Empiricist Theories, Procedural vs. Substantive Theories, Normative vs. Positive Theories, Design Scopes, Designers vs. People, Form and Space Creation Paradigms, Efficient Tools and Sources in the Design Process, and Place vs. Non-Place Theories. The respective design theories are illustrated with diagrams, tables and figures, condensing the content of over 140 essential theoretical texts that address various aspects of design processes. Given its scope, the book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, and to researchers and practitioners in design, urban planning, urban design, architecture, art, etc.