Queering Comfort through Theories of Atmosphere

Andrea Wheeler (Iowa State University)

Phenomenological method is used in many different research contexts to examine experience. It can even ask questions about often painful or traumatic events. Its concern is subjective experience, and its research method implies a study of subjectivity. The science of comfort in building however, looks at user experience through a very different lens. Established by building engineers it presents a perspective on the experience of buildings that distances the subject from environment despite the affective theme of the discourse. This proposed paper thus examines how the current critical discourses of atmosphere and affect in architectural theory might impact on the science of comfort in building and in particular impact in the field of sustainable building design.The phenomenological researcher aims at understanding the subjective foundations for being able to experience. He or she focuses on understanding how human beings perceive, understand and live in the built environment. The building science lens on the other hand understands the subject as independent of built reality, a subject nevertheless experiencing comfort. This counter perspective to phenomenology dominates the field of comfort. And yet we feel architecture, and this is the discourse of architectural atmosphere and in buildings we feel comfortable. Critically examining the theorists of atmosphere and affect in architecture, including their conceptualizations of body. this paper examines how the discourse of comfort could be theorized for the better environmental design of buildings.