Thermal Delight in Architecture A Book by Lisa Heschong 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. 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. The Cinderella of architectureTwo thermal archetypesSonorisms IIIAnasazi dwellingsMigration within buildings+21 More The fire of oak logsInglenookThe Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the SensesPredicted Mean VoteThermal DelightThe spirits' bath house
Fire, the animating spirit We can easily imagine from our own experience why fire might be used as a symbol of the life of a house and the family that lives there. The fire was certainly the most lifelike element of the house: it consumed food and left behind waste; it could grow and move seemingly by its own will; and it could exhaust itself and die. And most important it was warm, one of the most fundamental qualities that we associate with our own lives. When the fire dies, its remains become cold, just as the body becomes cold when a person dies. Drawing a parallel to the concept of the soul that animates the physical body of the person, the fire, then, is the animating spirit for the body of the house. Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight in Architecture Howl's Moving CastleThe boiler room firelife