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Why do we often think in terms of “air conditioner equivalent”?



Illustration


“It’s cool here, it feels like there’s air conditioning!”

You have probably already heard someone say this phrase when entering a buried cellar or a church in summer, during a period of extreme heat.

It expresses a feeling of comfort produced by a temperature contrast between the inside and the outside, of the order of 5°C to 6°C.

It is difficult to appreciate the extent to which compression air conditioning, invented a little over a century ago by Willis Carrier, has become a reference for describing the sensation of freshness.

While churches and buried cellars are rarely air-conditioned in our latitudes, we judge the comfort produced by these spaces thanks to their significant thermal inertia by reference to the compression air conditioning system, although much more recent in the history of architecture .

Air conditioning has become a true standard of freshness, even cooling produced by the evaporation of trees is quantified in “air conditioning equivalent”.

We thereby forget the extent of the strategies that exist to produce a sensation of refreshment in history: thermal inertia, the evaporation of water, the movements of the air, but also odors and sounds associated with coolness (fountain for example).

So, the next time you come into a cool place this summer, remember to say: “It’s cool here, it seems like there’s inertia!” »



Sources: R. Banham, R. Célaire

Image: Unsplash, Sergei A.






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