Human Environmental Requirements—A Basis for Developing Products in the Heating and Ventilating Industries

The accelerating rate of energy consumption and increasing environmental damage appear at present to be two unavoidable consequences of measures taken in the course of development planning.

One of the explanations for this is that the essential climatic function of a building development—that of modifying the natural climate so that it is favourable for man—is not borne in mind in all stages of the planning process. Hitherto, the effects of locating a polluting works on the regional climate have been disregarded. Little account has been taken of the way in which distributing green spaces and formulating town blocks affects the climate of urban areas. Insufficient attention is paid to the way in which the orientation and design of an individual building and the surrounding vegetation will influence the climate in the outdoor areas around the building. Sometimes, calculations are made of the changes between the outdoor and indoor heat climates that would occur as a result of the particular construction and material composition employed on the building, but these are used primarily as a means of defining the initial conditions for climatic control installations and not for determining the joint climatic properties of the building.

Another explanation of this uneconomic climatic planning is that the aim of climatic modification has been incorrectly formulated. Hitherto, endeavours have been made to create an indoor climate that keeps the physical environment of man in a static condition. This condition has been termed the ‘comfort climate’. This has been defined as those values of the elements of the physical environment that deliver neutral information to the sensory organs. If one wishes to be controversial, one can say that the aim of climatic planning has been to create a ‘comfort climate’, which effectively prevents man from receiving stimulating information from his surroundings. More economical climatic planning calls for a definition of the ideal climate to suit the way in which people function.

This paper discusses the need to define human environmental requirements as a basis for more conscious cooperation between planners, architects and engineers as well as a basis for developing products in the heating and ventilating industries.