Atmospheric Apparatus : the production of another comfort paradigm

Abstract

Nowadays, being thermal comfort is no longer a challenging problem for modern living. With the aids of the modern environmental control technologies, a fast, convenient and effective thermal comfort experience can be easily obtained with less effort than ever before. And due to the technologies' capabilities, this comfort experience can be universally adopted anywhere regardless of the physical location and climate condition. However, this widely adopted comfort experience has been proved to be problematic due to its nature of producing comfort. The highly technological dependent and the energy reliance approach are not suitable for a sustainable development. Therefore, the goal of the thesis is to challenge this modern comfort experience and argue there exists "another comfort paradigm" in which a new kind of atmospheric experience is obtained by architectural intervention. And, the thesis proposes Atmospheric Apparatus as a new architectural typology to generate alternative thermal experiences for new comfort paradigm. In order to define the "another comfort paradigm," the thesis examines the current modern comfort phenomenon on its production, impacts and experience. Then, the thesis studies the scientific knowledges of thermal comfort and the thermodynamic relationship between human body and the atmosphere. Lastly, there are architectural proposal of the Atmospheric Apparatus for "another comfort paradigm."