Thermal pleasure in built environments: spatial alliesthesia from contact heating

The comfort zone is bounded by thermal environmental conditions that may be described as acceptably cool or acceptably warm, and engineering out of existence these innocuous thermal conditions on the fringes of the adaptive comfort range may not be necessary. In contrast to the conventional understa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Building research and information : the international journal of research, development and demonstration development and demonstration, 2016-04, Vol.44 (3), p.248-262
Main Authors: Parkinson, Thomas, de Dear, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adaptation
alliesthesia
Building automation
Comfort
Contact
Discomfort
Environmental conditions
Heating
local discomfort
non-steady-state environments
Perception
personal control
physiology
Segments
Skin temperature
Stimuli
thermal comfort
thermal pleasure
Urban environments
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Summary:The comfort zone is bounded by thermal environmental conditions that may be described as acceptably cool or acceptably warm, and engineering out of existence these innocuous thermal conditions on the fringes of the adaptive comfort range may not be necessary. In contrast to the conventional understanding of local discomfort, spatial alliesthesia exploits corrective differences in the rate of change in skin temperature between individual body segments to elicit positive affective sensations. This paper examines reverse instances of local discomfort, or spatial alliesthesia, from warm contact stimuli applied to hand and feet when exposed to ambient conditions towards the lower margin of the comfort zone. It was found that subjects with moderate feelings of displeasure or even indifference were still capable of experiencing a pleasant response to localized thermal stimuli. Brief whole-body thermal pleasure was observed from in-situ skin temperature changes at a single distal body site. These effects were subtle and not universally experienced, so the success of their deliberate implementation in built environments depends heavily on some form of individual control. Spatial alliesthesia therefore complements the body of literature investigating personal environmental control and local thermal discomfort by providing a theoretical framework of thermal perception in non-neutral environments.
ISSN:0961-3218
1466-4321
DOI:10.1080/09613218.2015.1082334