Climate controlled indoor office work environments, labour and gender in an “ecological crisis.”

An exploration of who the climate-controlled workplace is designed for as told through an ethnographic lens

This study looks at what is revealed or what knowledge is created in relation to thermal comfort, in an era of global warming, and is done so by looking at and listening to daily practices of dressing for the air-conditioned workplace. The process involves entering into those air-conditioned workplaces and listening to how people manage thermal comfort through their daily practices of dressing for the air-conditioned workplace.

Stephen Healy (2018) suggests micro mechanisms of control such as those found in the thermal control of buildings can feed into wider authoritarian tendencies towards control (Ackermann 2002, 184 in Healy 2018, 312). It emphasises the need to ask who does this design fit, for what purpose, and is this a good standard for imagining future workplaces?

Contact: Sara Daly

Email: Sara.Daly1@monash.edu