The Problem of Thermal Comfort in Climatic Design

Buildings are responsible for a large percentage of the record levels of energy consumption and carbon emission in the Anthropocene epoch, and significant proportion of these are associated with mechanical cooling. In face of peak oil and climate change, many advocates are calling for a reduction in our reliance on mechanical cooling and for us to turn to non-air-conditioning technologies. For many architects, historians and theorists, not only do mechanical cooling (as provided by air-conditioning) and “natural” cooling (through sun-shading and ventilation)representcontrastingtechnologiesandphilosophies,thearchitectural formsassociatedwiththesetechnologiesarealsoseenasdiametricallyopposed physical and cultural entities: productform versus placeform, active cooling in contrast to passive cooling, conservative mode against selective mode, etc.

This paper questions these oppositions. Examining the emerging discourse of tropical architecture in the British imperial contexts of the 1950s and 1960s, this paper argues that, like mechanically cooled architecture, tropical architecture was underpinned by a mechanistic and reductionist understanding of the complex relationships between human well-being, climate and society. Looking at the research and teaching by figures such as Otto Koenigsberger and George Atkinson at the Department of Tropical Architecture at the AA and the various Building Research Stations in the British Empire, this paper shows that thermal comfort, as established in early twentieth century by the airconditioning researchers associated with ASHVE and industrial physiologists, was the “fundamental principle” upon which tropical architecture was constructed. Thermal comfort experiments, however, assumed human beings as passive biological receptacles of environmental stimuli and reinforced the old colonial perception that tropical climate was a source of thermal stress. Thus, tropical architecture ignored how comfort was not an environmental-biological attribute but an achievement inextricably linked to social practices and cultural perceptions. The subsequent failure of tropical architecture can be attributed to these oversights.

Presented at “Architectural History of the Anthropocene” session, Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference April 2015 in Chicago.