Inside OUT - Human Health and the Air-Conditioning Era
An interdisciplinary take on indoor environmental quality, with a focus on indoor air quality, in the age of mechanically conditioned spaces.
My latest publication is in the form of a chapter contributed to this edited volume by Liz McCormick, PhD candidate and Assistant Professor in Architecture at UNC Charlotte. I really like the book cover photo Liz and the publisher landed on for this. And the different perspectives provided by the contributors (Z Smith, Dr. Sarah Haines, and Dr. U. Sean Vance) make for an interesting take on human health and comfort, respiratory equity, the built environment's microbiome, and sustainability within our mechanically conditioned built environments, at least in my opinion. It was certainly an enjoyable and intellectually rich experience to be a part of.
My own contribution involved framing the built environment as a building/occupant organism and introducing the concept of evolutionary mismatches to help guide the design, evaluation, and research of our built environments (focusing on aspects of IAQ, health, and technology w/in mechanically conditioned environments). I previously stacked about evolutionary mismatches here - Shedding Some Light on Circadian Evolutionary Mismatches. Though in my symposium presentation (that the book is based on) I was able to also include a greater focus on related social/cultural factors - the scope had to be narrowed for the chapter (as it did for all of the contributors).
From my chapter: “… across the development spectrum, from conception through old age, we tend to pay less attention to the needs of people at either end [as I also pointed out in the above referenced stack]. It’s arguable that both ends have less of a voice, both in general and with respect to the design process in the AEC Industry. As a result, it’s possible that these age ranges tend to experience a greater number of evolutionary mismatches and or are subjected to their more severe impacts. Adopting an evolutionary framework as laid out here can increase the respiratory equity (Vance’s chapter) within our built environments.”
“Recognizing that human traits (physiological, psychological, and social/ cultural) may not be optimally suited for contemporary environments – how we design them, how we operate them, what technology we integrate within them, etc. – because of our evolutionary history provides us with an opportunity to understand why that is the case and better optimize our environments based on that understanding.”
If you’re interested in checking it out, the following code, SMA22, will save you 20% when you order through Routledge.com.