Duration: June 2026 – December 2027 (18 months)

Scientific Coordinator: Paolo Giardullo, FISPPA – University of Padua

Funding Body:  “Giorgio Levi Cases” Centre for Energy Economics and Technology – University of Padua

Partners: FISPPA Department; Department of Industrial Engineering (DII)

Abstract

DEFCOMPRA – Defining Comfort in Practice investigates how thermal comfort is defined, negotiated and achieved in everyday life, and how interactions between residents, domestic spaces and technologies contribute to shaping energy consumption in buildings. The project addresses the recurring gap between energy performance predicted through standards and modelling assumptions and performance observed under real operating conditions. DEFCOMPRA approaches this energy performance gap not simply as a technical issue, but also as the outcome of interactions between standardised assumptions, building characteristics and everyday practices. Thermal comfort is therefore analysed as a situated and socio-material achievement shaped through routines, uses of space, technologies and adaptive strategies. The research focuses on twelve monitored social-housing dwellings in the Municipality of Vigonza and combines data on energy consumption and indoor environmental quality with in-home ethnography of energy consumption practice. By moving through domestic spaces together with residents, the research reconstructs the practices through which heat and cold are managed, rooms are used, ventilation is regulated, and building systems and devices are operated.

DEFCOMPRA also provides a laboratory for collaboration between social sciences and engineering, bringing monitored data into dialogue with knowledge of everyday practices in order to develop interpretations and models of energy consumption that are more sensitive to the diversity of real-life building use.

Research Area: Environment, Sustainability and Territory