Comfort in a brave new world

This commentary scrutinizes Building Research Information's 2008 special issue titled 'Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society' from three vantage points. The first compares the special issue with another published on the same topic in 1982 in an attempt to see what differences a quarter of a century have brought to comfort-related research. The second seeks to identify what has been gained and lost as comfort research has moved away from the reductionist and positivistic certainties of 26 years ago towards the much more highly nuanced, historical, and social constructivist position reported in the 2008 special issue. And the third asks what would need to be done next to enable the more recent, adaptive, approach to modifying indoor climate to out-compete the engineering paradigm that has become so embedded and ingrained in professional practice over the past century. The commentary concludes with the challenge that unless this new, adaptive approach can rapidly become codified and enshrined in professional codes and standards - perhaps even in (inter)national regulations, it will not even be able to begin to operate as one of the building-related bulwarks against climate change.