The notion of comfort, from word to concept

Abstract

The notion of comfort emerged from a background of constraints caused by environmental, social, psychological, technological etc. factors, as a human attitude and endeavor to diminish these constraints and then to improve other elements that could ensure a different quality standard of life. In the last two decades, one can perceive an intensification of the efforts put into revealing the factors, together with their limitations, which contribute to achieving the state of comfort in various types of buildings considered isolated or in relation to others, in a rural or urban setting, and putting them into a standardized format that is to be taken into account. The increasing debates between specialists on the one hand and between specialists and occupants/users/residents on the other hand regarding the addition of new factors or the preeminence of their importance generates the re-contextualization of the notion of “comfort”, whose elements are presented in this study. The last chapter proposes a different approach and understanding of the notion of comfort which can thus become a concept that finds its starting point in the way man is structured as a living being and takes