ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 addresses what minimizing climate-change will mean for design aims. As it’s common to compensate for dissatisfying surroundings by buying things, the local (experiential) environment can be seen to drive global (structural) environmental deterioration. Furthermore, as we tend not to care for things we don’t enjoy, this can shorten buildings’ and mechanical systems’ lifespan, at considerable environmental cost; besides often producing up to 50% performance-gap inefficiencies. As such a need to compensate for poor surroundings influences personal choices, feeling responses to environmental design have the potential to either drive or reduce global structural environmental deterioration. This gives human feelings and places’ non-material aspects comparable value to technological solutions – if not greater. Consequently, quantity and quality, feeling and fact, material and non-material interact with great complexity at many levels. These, however, aren’t separate issues, but different faces of a single crisis – or potential solution.
