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Microclimates of Luxury McGill, Garrett
Abstract
Design has forever addressed issues rooted in climate mitigation, yet the sweeping use of fossil fuel heating and air-conditioning has allowed designers to ignore natural design parameters of sun exposure, wind direction, and climate. Our bodies continually produce excessive heat, our skin which hovers around 34°C must continually expel heat to the environment to cool down. For this to happen, our environment must be cooler than we are, roughly between 21°C and 28°C. This ideal temperature range, historically found outside in the ambient air temperature, is at risk of disappearing. MIRCOCLIMATES OF LUXURY confronts the challenges of extreme heat with a review of historical landscape typologies known for their thermal comfort. Inspired by passive cooling techniques, the project presents a speculative design for Anna Wintour’s Long Island summer home, focused on the body’s interaction with heat transfer and material properties. The work repositions private residential commissions not as a retreat from public responsibility, but as a space for urgent experimentation at scale, where theory and practice are actively engaged. It concludes not as a finished product, but as a manifesto in progress for a post grad school career, driven by a desire to accelerate learning through making and to re-frame climate as a design medium.
Item Metadata
Title |
Microclimates of Luxury
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Creator | |
Date Issued |
2025-05
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Description |
Design has forever addressed issues rooted in climate mitigation, yet the sweeping use of fossil fuel heating and air-conditioning has allowed designers to ignore natural design parameters of sun exposure, wind direction, and climate. Our bodies continually produce excessive heat, our skin which hovers around 34°C must continually expel heat to the environment to cool down. For this to happen, our environment must be cooler than we are, roughly between 21°C and 28°C. This ideal temperature range, historically found outside in the ambient air temperature, is at risk of disappearing.
MIRCOCLIMATES OF LUXURY confronts the challenges of extreme heat with a review of historical landscape typologies known for their thermal comfort. Inspired by passive cooling techniques, the project presents a speculative design for Anna Wintour’s Long Island summer home, focused on the body’s interaction with heat transfer and material properties.
The work repositions private residential commissions not as a retreat from public responsibility, but as a space for urgent experimentation at scale, where theory and practice are actively engaged. It concludes not as a finished product, but as a manifesto in progress for a post grad school career, driven by a desire to accelerate learning through making and to re-frame climate as a design medium.
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Type | |
Language |
eng
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Series | |
Date Available |
2025-05-05
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0448754
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URI | |
Affiliation | |
Campus | |
Peer Review Status |
Unreviewed
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Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International