Thermal Delight in Architecture

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.

  1. ​The Cinderella of architecture​
  2. ​Two thermal archetypes​
  3. ​Sonorisms III​
  4. ​Anasazi dwellings​
  5. ​Migration within buildings​
  1. ​The fire of oak logs​
  2. ​Inglenook​
  3. ​The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses​
  4. ​Predicted Mean Vote​
  5. ​Thermal Delight​
  6. ​The spirits' bath house​
  1. The Cinderella of architecture

    An analogy might be drawn with the use of light quality as a design element, truly a venerable old architectural tradition. The light quality—direct, indirect, natural, artificial, diffuse, dappled, focused—can be subtly manipulated in the design of a space in order to achieve the desired effect.

    Thermal qualities might also be included in the architect's initial conception and could influence all phases of design. Instead, thermal conditions are commonly standardized with the use of modern mechanical systems that can be specified, installed, and left to function independently of the overall design concept.

    Indeed, environmental control systems tend to be treated rather like the Cinderella of architecture; given only the plainest clothes to wear, they are relegated to a back room to do the drudgery that maintains the elegant life-style of the other sisters: light, form, structure, and so forth.

  2. Two thermal archetypes

    The hearth, a refuge of dry warmth from a cold world, and the oasis, a preserve of coolness and moisture in a desert wilderness.

  3. Sonorisms III

    One way not to be there (without dying).

    "Yes, we have felt happy and alive together."

    The Finnish word loyly, meaning "the steam which rises from the stones" originally signified spirit, or even life.

    The tradition of the great shade tree.

  4. Anasazi dwellings

    The Anasazi Indians of the southwestern United States were remarkably clever in choosing the sites for their cliff dwellings. They invariably chose locations shaded in the summer by an overhanging ledge of the cliff, but exposed to full sun all winter long. With their backs to the cliff, the dwellings were protected from the winter winds and also took advantage of the thermal mass of the earth to moderate the temperature flux.

    1. ​Eaves and sun​
  5. Migration within buildings

    Many peoples of North Africa migrate within their buildings in both daily and seasonal patterns to take advantage of the various microclimates the buildings create.

  6. The notion of a thermal optimum persists

    There is an underlying assumption that the best thermal environment never needs to be noticed, and that once an objectively "comfortable" thermal environment has been provided, all of our thermal needs will have been met. The use of all of our extremely sophisticated environmental control systems is directed to this one end—to produce standard comfort zone conditions.

  7. A simple pleasure that comes from just using it

    People have a sense of warmth and coolness, a thermal sense like sight or smell, although it is not normally counted in the traditional list of our five senses.

    As with all our other senses, there seems to be a simple pleasure that comes from just using it, letting it provide us with bits of information about the world around, using it to explore and learn, or just to notice.

    There is a basic difference, however, between our thermal sense and all of our other senses. When our thermal sensors tell us an object is cold, that object is already making us colder. If, on the other hand, I look at a red object it won't make me grow redder, nor will touching a bump object make me bumpy.

  8. Their opposites close at hand

    We should note that all of these places of thermal extremes (Finnish saunas, Japanese hot baths, American beaches and mountains) have their opposites close at hand. There are possibly two reasons for having the extremes right next to each other.

    The first is physiological: the availability of extremes ensures that we can move from one to the other to maintain a thermal balance.

    The second might be termed aesthetic: the experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.

  9. Substitutes for the thermal experience

    Such clues from other senses can become so strongly associated with a sense of coolness or warmth that they can occasionally substitute for the thermal experience itself. For example, the taste of mint seems refreshing and cool regardless of what temperature it is. Similarly, the pressure of heavy blankets conveys a feeling of warmth quite independent of their actual thermal qualities.

    1. ​You can taste it with your eyes​
  10. The totality of its sensory stimulation

    Perhaps the human fascination with fire stems from the totality of its sensory stimulation. The fire gives a flickering and glowing light, ever moving, ever changing. It crackles and hisses and fills the room with the smells of smoke and wood and perhaps even food. It penetrates us with its warmth. Every sense is stimulated and all of their associated modes of perception, such as memory and an awareness of time, are also brought into play, focused on the one experience of the fire. Together they create such an intense feeling of reality, of the "here and nowness" of the moment, that the fire becomes completely captivating.

  11. We need an object for our affections

    We need an object for our affections, something identifiable on which to focus attention. But in a typical office building, to what can we attribute the all-pervasive comfort of 70ºF, 50% relative humidity? Most likely, we would simply take it all for granted. When thermal comfort is a constant condition, constant in both space and time, it becomes so abstract that it loses its potential to focus attention.

    1. ​It's cold outside, but this room is quite cozy​

    "We are also unlikely to relate our thermal well-being to anything in particular unless there is an awareness at some level that an object or place does indeed have a thermal function. Radiant hot water pipes embedded in the ceiling may do an admirable job of keeping us warm and comfortable, but there is no way to sense directly that the ceiling has a thermal function. The lack of specific clues makes it hard to relate to the ceiling in the same way we relate to, say, the hearth."

  12. The Skylid

    INTERIOR_OF_THE_OFFICE_OF_ZOMEWORKS%2C_INC.%2C_OF_ALBUQUERQUE_NEW_MEXICO._THE_FIRM%27S_PATENTED_SKYLID_IN_THE_CEILING..._-_NARA_-_555290.jpg

    The louvers automatically open to let solar radiation in when the sun shines and close in the evening to prevent radiant heat loss, controlled and driven by the shifting weight of freon.

    We look into the greenhouse and watch the Skylids closing automatically, one by one and in no particular order, and we are aware of the hot air rising, cold air settling. They remind us that the earth is turning and the day is ending.

    The mechanical response of the Skylid, predictable but inexact, seems more alive than an electrical system controlled by a thermostat, which would close or open all the louvers at once.

  13. Retained as a quality

    Thermal information is not differentiated in our memory; rather it is retained as a quality, or underlying tone, associated with the whole experience of the place. It contributes to our sense of the particular personality, or spirit, that we identify with that place. In remembering the spirit of a place, we can anticipate that if we return, we will have the same sense of comfort or relaxation as before.

  14. Thermal aediculae

    The inglenook, the gazebo, and the porch swing also have strong definitions of their spaces. They are each a bit like a little house set off for a special thermal purpose. They might be termed "thermal aediculae". Although the term aedicula is most often used in conjunction with a sacred or ceremonial little house, it can also be used to describe any diminutive structure used to mark a place as special.

    Summerson contends that there is a basic human "fascination of the minitature shelter." Perhaps this is because the aedicula intensifies ones experience of the place by working someone like a caricature. By reducing some things in scale, it exaggerates the importance of other things, most especially the size of a person in relation to the space.

    1. ​Inglenook​
    2. ​Aedicula​
    3. ​Follies​
    4. ​To build a folly​
  15. At a uniformly comfortable termperature

    In America our tendency has been to get away from thermal conditions as a determinant of behavior. Instead, we have used our technology to keep entire living and working complexes at a uniformly comfortable temperature. As a result, our spatial habits have become diffused, and activities that were once localized by thermal conditions have spread out over a whole house or building. We forget, unless a system breaks down, that such wide-ranging use of space is extremely dependent upon the available heating and cooling equipment.

    1. ​Controlled environments​
  16. For their own concealed passion

    Sharing the experience of a pleasant thermal setting may add an extra bonus to courtship. The gentle and cooling breeze of the southern porch swing provided a happy excuse for a couple to sit quietly together. A more technological version might be seen in the type of car that the teenagers of the 1950s considered ideal for a hot date—the convertible. Slightly more erotic, perhaps, were the atrium and green houses that were favorite settings for romance in Victorian England. The lovers could get lost among the leaves of the exotic tropical plants and possibly mistake the hot, humid atmosphere for their own concealed passion.

  17. The kairo

    The Japanese have notoriously unheatable houses. They have traditionally preferred to design their houses to be cool and airy in summer and then to get by in the winter with localized ways to heat the body. Smallest of all means is the kairo, a little case carried around in pockets or between layers of clothes that contains a warm charcoal ember.

    The kairo has since gone chemical. See also: Feeling the heat and Sumi. It's hard not to feel like something has been lost in the transition.

  18. The ritualized use of a place

    The association of comfort with people and place are reinforced by the ritualized use of a place. Using a place at a set time and in a specific manner creates a constancy as dependable as the place itself. It establishes, in time and behavior, a definition of place as strong as any architectural spatial definition, such as an aedicula, might be. Ritualized use can do more than reinforce the affection for a place. Through ritual, a place becomes an essential element in the customs of a people.

  19. Functionalism can be a kind of religion

    We are not now inclined to regard modern heating and cooling systems as representative of a spiritual realm. The physical principles involved in their operation are thoroughly understood; there is no mystery about them. They are simply functional, designed according to straightforward engineering practice to serve their intended function as efficiently and conveniently as possible.

    And yet functionalism itself can be a kind of religion.

    ...From the fifties and sixties we have inherited numerous heating and cooling systems created within an ethos of universal convenience. Machines to maintain our thermal comfort were conceived of as mechanical servants, providing for our every need while, like an English butler, remaining as unobtrusive as possible.

    1. ​Humble servants​
  20. Protected, yet tuned in

    Karen Terry's house in Sante Fe, designed by architect David Wright, is perhaps one of the most compelling passive designs.

    Stepping down its hillside site in four tiers, it nestles low into the ground. Thick adobe sidewalls create a strong sense of shelter and its banks of windows look resolutely to the sun. The image is very much of a house attuned to sun and earth.

    Rather than providing the convenience of a constant indoor temperature regulated by a thermostat, a passively solar-heated house may go through an air temperature flux as great as 20ºF per day. People learn to live with this flux.

    Living in a solar house is a whole new awareness, another dimension. I have the comfort of a house with the serenity of being outdoors—protected, yet tuned in.

    1. ​Deep Interlock​
    2. ​Introduction to Permaculture​
    3. ​239. Small Panes​

    I wonder if our obsession with plate glass windows—ostensibly with the goal of putting us 'in touch with nature'—is perhaps because we've rejected our thermal sense in favor of the visual. It's ironic that we claim to want this open connection with the environment through a pane of glass, and yet reject wholesale the idea of even moderate temperature fluctuations which might do a better job of making that connection with the outside world.

  21. Blessed by the four elements

    The Indian stone temple also included, in its architectural form, the means for being blessed by the four elements—earth, wind, water, fire.

    • Before entering the temple gates, one removed one's shoes to touch and be blessed by the earth.
    • Then upon passing through the temple gateway, one is blessed by the air with a gust of wind.
    • A blessing by water is obtained by bathing in the temple tank, or at least descending its steps to touch the water.
    • Finally, on entering the cool interior of the sanctuary, the worshipper is given a mark on the forehead with ashes taken from a sacred flame by an attendant priest. Even this blessing by fire has a slight cooling sensation to it.

    Perhaps it is only coincidental that each of these four blessings is associated with a cooling sensation; and yet, the use of forms and materials that inevitably create coolness is quite remarkable.

    1. ​Avatar: The Last Airbender​
    2. ​The Legend of Korra​
    3. ​A hierarchical system of sense​
  22. The ancient fire spirit who lived in the hearth

    The garden is as central to the concept of an Islamic home as the hearth is to the European home. It is interesting, then, that the hearth-fire in old traditions has a similar association with the life of the inhabitants of the house.

    Commonly, the fire of the hearth was not allowed to go out. It was carefully covered with ashes each night at curfew so that a few selected embers would survive until morning. (In fact, the word "curfew" originated from the French word for cover-the-fire—couvre-feu.) Raglan comments that "the alarm and horror felt if the hearth-fire went out are out of all proportion to the inconvenience caused" by the need to relight it.

    1. ​Howl's Moving Castle​
  23. The housewarming ceremony

    The connection between the life of the fire and the life of the inhabitant is also reflected in the custom of the housewarming ceremony. In contemporary America a housewarming party is given when a family moved into a new house. Perhaps all of the friends and their good wishes are thought to warm the house metaphorically. In traditional cultures, however, the warming is quite literal, for it involves the bringing in, or the first kindling, of the hearth fire, which then creates the proper spirit and sanctity to transform the house into a home.

  24. 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.

    1. ​Howl's Moving Castle​
    2. ​The boiler room​