Socioplastics 11949 The Temperature Written and the Temperature Lived
A building’s thermal performance often appears as a number detached from occupation. HeatSentence begins from the fact that temperature becomes public knowledge through specifications, thresholds, complaints and promises. A contractual target, a resident’s account of sleeplessness and a sensor reading near an air-conditioning unit describe related but distinct conditions. Their encounter matters for decisions about comfort, responsibility and energy. Reyner Banham’s environmental history challenged architecture’s tendency to treat climate control as a separate technical matter. Lisa Heschong examines thermal pleasure and experience. Andreas Malm traces the political histories of fossil infrastructures, while Elizabeth Povinelli studies how environmental governance distributes endurance and abandonment. Their work connects indoor temperature with material systems and unequal exposure. A housing review could compare contractual targets, sensor placement, energy bills and residents’ accounts across several rooms and seasons. Researchers would record the location of readings, duration, ventilation, surface temperatures and who can control the system. This would show how a single threshold relates to lived conditions and the distribution of energy costs. HeatSentence treats thermal language as an institutional arrangement. The marker helps teams examine how a number becomes a standard, how residents’ accounts enter the record and what action follows when evidence differs. It can inform contracts, building operation and retrofit decisions by connecting stated targets with the conditions people experience over time. The method also clarifies who is responsible for investigating discrepancies and communicating resulting changes.
REFERENCES
Banham, R. (1969) The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. London: Architectural Press.
Heschong, L. (1979) Thermal Delight in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Malm, A. (2016) Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London: Verso.
Povinelli, E.A. (2011) Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/p/socioplastics-project-index.html