ORO Editions

Adaptive Comfort Model

Field study results showing occupants' preferred comfort temperature in relation to seasonal shifts in outdoor temperature. 80 and 90% acceptability zones rise with climatic trends. This holds for NV, MM and AC buildings (Parkinson et al. 2020).

Cooling Conversions

Cooling abbreviations

NV Natural ventilation

AC Air-conditioned

NCM Night-cooled mass

MM Mixed-mode

MV Mechanical ventilation

ASHRAE American Societ y of Heating, Refrigeration + Air-conditioning Engineers

Std 55 ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55: Thermal Environmental

Supporting Evidence

When people can control cooling modes, fans and operable windows, they are more connected to Nature's rhythms of the day and season. In this context, they prefer a wider seasonal variation of indoor temperatures. The comfort zone in naturally ventilated and mixed mode buildings shifts as occupants adapt to seasonal conditions.

Warm climate traditions can be seen in homes where inhabitants delight at Spring's first opportunity to open windows, hear birds and feel the approaching rain's atmosphere. As Summer waxes, residents yearn to prolong openness and its pleasures, practicing a ritual of opening windows at night and closing in the morning, allowing the building's mass to coast through the day's rising heat. As summer wanes, again windows open during the day to enjoy, as the circuit inverts. Natural ventilation (NV) offers savory connections to outdoor nature and a familiar daily cycle in what was a fundamental aspect of pre-AC US Southern culture, expressed architecturally in vernacular porches, high ceilings, breezeways and large operable windows (Arsenault 1984).

The adaptive comfort model, described in Chapter 3, originally applied to just NV buildings. Along with Parkinson, Brager and colleagues (2020) conducted new analysis of the Global Thermal Comfort Database II, showing that comfort responses in mixed-mode (MM) buildings are similar to those in NV; the adaptive comfort standard in ASHRAE Std 55 (2020) now applies to MM. The same study found that people adapt most strongly to prevailing indoor temperatures, regardless of the building conditioning strategy. People adapt to higher AC setpoints, therefore over-cooling can be avoided.

Occupant satisfaction in MM buildings was found by Brager and Baker (2009) to be higher than that in the CBE Occupant Survey database overall. The best performers were moderate climate buildings with radiant (rather than air) systems, that allowed high degrees of direct user control without automated window locks.

302 Gando Teacher's Housing

Burkina Faso, 2004

Kéré Architecture

At the Gando Primary School, houses collect harvested rainwater in channels atop stabilized earth block common walls. The exposed conduits testify to water's significance and connect to several shared cisterns.

Revealed Conveyance

expresses the movement of rainwater from catchment to storage, manifesting the hydrologic process in daily life.

below Conveyance + storage plan diagram uplifting movement gentle flows a showers' yield enraptured we are

Moving water is emotionally moving. In its flows one sees infinite self-similar patterns. Even a loose fascination while watching and hearing its dancing motifs opens psychic access to a calming state. Beyond such direct experience, when rainfall conveyance is exposed to view, occupants engage in and relate to natural processes. In this awareness, the secure pleasure of belonging in a larger world arises. This schema supports both of these experiences. Ordinarily, people seek shelter, rarely thinking about the relationship between rainfall and its containing ecosystem. Most contemporary buildings keep water out of sight and out of mind. Instead, buildings can express how they interact with the water cycle, making pleasurable, educational and meaningful the architectural elements that manage runoff and harvest rainwater. Water, with its ability to take the shape of its vessel, has been celebrated by architects with scuppers, rain chains, gargoyles or other sculptural features, gutters, downspouts, cascades, swales and trenches, each directing water in an intentionally visible and auditory way.