Lecture in the World Sustainable Building WSB14
Marc Folch gives a lecture in the WSB14 link
Can we measure something as intangible as COMFORT?
We’ve tried. For almost two years, we’ve been monitoring the MZ HOUSE in Barcelona. This is a project of CALDERON-FOLCH-SARSANEDAS, I am one of the architects and this is my family’s home. We have more than 15.000 hours monitored which represents about 60.000 data. The air quality, the interior and ambient temperatures and the relative humidity have been recorded every 60 minutes.
BUT WHAT IS COMFORT?
Comfort may be described as the phenomenology of the well‐being, the satisfying adequacy of the combination of the different perceptions of both internal and external conditions that affect our organism or sensibility. These parameters, as we understand them today, refer to air quality, thermal, acoustic, visual and aesthetic perception.
These parameters vary according to the use, context, environment, etc. (you don’t want the same conditions when playing in an iindoor pavilion or when getting out of the shower a bit later).
Therefore, the achievement of comfort would be based on:
‐ Specificity: define the particular aims of comfort and well‐being for the project
‐ Measurement: analyse the parameters using specific tools to achieve the objectives