Comfort

Definition

Comfort names the interior's operative criterion at its most bodily: the room arranged for its occupants' ease of body and use — light where it is needed, warmth that can be controlled, furniture that can be sat in — rather than for display or formal effect. Elsie de Wolfe gives the concept its advice-literature program at the level of services and equipment: "My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric light openings… In my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of the dressing-table, and so on" (p. 82); and heat as a designed quantity against the default system: "We Americans are slaves to steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat… do arrange in the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated" (p. 83) — comfort as light, air and controllable fire ("I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires"). The Intimus editors generalize the concept's social weight: comfort and decoration are "not only the measure of a woman's skill and cleverness at establishing tranquillity but a political form of resistance towards patriarchy within the social and design spheres" — comfort claimed as a design value with a political career. Baldwin's editors place his whole practice "in service to the comfort and expression of living" (p. 26); Beecher & Stowe make comfort the economical house's product: "small and economical houses can be made to secure most of the comforts and many of the refinements of large and expensive ones" (p. 44).

Key Thinkers

• Thomas Hope — comfort's first theorist in the wiki's lineage (1807): comfort as the essential tier of furniture ("the more essential requisites of utility and comfort, for which it is most immediately framed"), the tier beauty may not "imped[e]," and the designer's task the union of comfort-attributes with "visible and intellectual beauty" (p. 154).
• Elsie de Wolfe — comfort's professional specifier (1913): light openings placed for occupants, wood fires and controlled heat, the complaint that comfort systems arrive "under perfect control" only when the decorator insists.
• Billy Baldwin — comfort as the room's heart: the burning fire "whenever there is the slightest excuse" among the things that "give a room heart" (p. 27); design "in service to the comfort and expression of living" (editors, p. 26).
• Catharine E. Beecher & Harriet Beecher Stowe — comfort as the planned economy's output: the close packing of conveniences securing "most of the comforts and many of the refinements" at small cost (p. 44).
• Ursula Emery McClure & Michael A. McClure — the modern counter-history: air conditioning's "absolute boundary between inside and outside" as the hermetic seal that made comfort a sealing technology (see hermetic-seal).
• Sigfried Giedion (via Jacobus) — the media-historical shift of the concept's ground: medieval spatial comfort "determined by the unity of the proportions, materials, and form of the room's shell" versus the nineteenth-century interior where comfort migrated from shell to objects — "Habitation areas no longer needed to be strongly defined spatial realms in order to elicit comfort. Space had become neutral, a backdrop for the smaller designed objects that began to dominate our lives."

Related Concepts

• Domestic Interior — comfort's site: the room as the body's provision (light, heat, air, seat) rather than an image.
• Suitability — comfort as suitability's first content: "each room shall have its lights placed for the comfort of its occupants."
• Domestic Economy — comfort's economical form: the Beechers' conveniences as the machinery of secured comfort.
• Sterility of Perfection — comfort's negative image: the perfected room "so beautiful, yet so cold" that offers no "small haven of comfort to sit in" (Baldwin).
• Hermetic Seal — comfort's modernist instrumentalization: environmental control as the absolute boundary (the McClures' sealed building; de Wolfe's hotel whose steam cannot be regulated "unless you turn it off altogether").
• Everyday Life — comfort's register of the everyday: tranquillity, rest, the ordinary body's needs as the design's stated end.
• Mechanization — comfort's media history: the shift from shell-defined comfort (the room's proportions and materials) to object-defined comfort (the attainable lamp, the art object) as machine production's interior effect.
• Domestic Interior — comfort's neutral backdrop: the room demoted from spatial realm to "a backdrop for the smaller designed objects that began to dominate our lives" (Giedion via Jacobus).

Source Support

• Becoming Places (Dovey 2010) — comfort's dark register: the "comfort zone" as exclusion — "Most important thing I think for me … is that I'm surrounded by PLUs – people like us. I see that as a comfort zone" (p. 60); comfort as the developer's product — covenants offering "a certain level of comfort that you give… he knows that his investment is actually protected" (p. 69), "the ultimate comfort zone as protection from the threat of unruly or higher-density development" (p. 77); and the library audit's counter-case — the Seattle Living Room's exposure ("There are no edges to provide the psychological comfort of prospect and refuge… a denial of comfort," p. 121). Comfort here is comfort-as-security (social, proprietary, investmental) — the affective engine of the closed place. See neighbourhood-character, place-identity.

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Ultrasuede (Wagner 2002/2006) — comfort's body-zone form: the floor-to-tabletop region as 'a charged zone of ergonomic action in the human body… projected onto the inhabitation of buildings, where it must accommodate and support multiple body postures and their functional needs' (p. 381). Eliel Saarinen's carpet is the concept's tactile comfort-technology: 'a textile that engaged and defined a localized space of the body and the zones of its tactile encounter,' 'serving as backrest, seat and floor covering' (p. 381) — comfort located in the meeting of body posture and surface, not in provision or style. Eero Saarinen's conversation pits carve seating 'from the depth of the floor' (p. 381) — comfort built into the section — and Baldwin's velvet bedroom extends it to envelopment ('a cave,' p. 384). Where the wiki's comfort tradition specifies provision (de Wolfe), economy (the Beechers) and livability (Melchionne), Wagner specifies posture-and-surface contact — the ergonomic register the concept lacked. See enclosure, repose.
• Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (Hope 1807/2006) — the concept's earliest theoretical placement in the wiki's lineage: comfort as furniture's essential tier, prior to beauty — "the more essential requisites of utility and comfort, for which it is most immediately framed, and with which it can consequently, on no account, dispense" (p. 153), against which elegance and beauty are "secondary attributes… which, without impeding the chief purpose of the object," add "additional gratification, both to the eye and to the imagination"; and the union-program that makes the designer's task the joining of the two — "the union of the different modifications of visible and intellectual beauty which were desirable, with the different attributes of utility and comfort which were essential" (p. 154). Comfort here is the indispensable tier that beauty may not impede — the two-tier doctrine that the later lineage (de Wolfe's occupant-centred lighting, the editors' "comfort and expression of living") inherits as the profession's first principle.
• Suitability, Simplicity and Proportion (de Wolfe 1913/2006) — the primary source: lights "placed for the comfort of its occupants" (p. 82); "slaves to steam heat" and the overheated small room (p. 83); the hotel's cold chimney and the proprietor's risk-aversion (p. 83); the editors' political reading of comfort as "resistance towards patriarchy."
• The Sterility of Perfection + The Rule Breaker's Success (Baldwin 1972/2006) — comfort as the room's heart: "a burning fire whenever there is the slightest excuse" (p. 27); the French apartment offering no "small haven of comfort to sit in" (p. 26); the editors' "comfort and expression of living" (p. 26).
• A Christian House (Beecher & Stowe 1869/2006) — comfort as the economy's product: "small and economical houses can be made to secure most of the comforts and many of the refinements of large and expensive ones" (p. 44); the planned conveniences that secure "health, thrift, and domestic happiness."
• On the Means by which Repose is Attainable in Decoration (Dresser 1876/2006) — comfort's aesthetic twin and its physiological warrant: where de Wolfe places lights "for the comfort of its occupants," Dresser judges rooms by their drain on the nervous system — "Excitement is endurable and even useful to the system, if sparingly indulged in; but the constant endurance of excitement is exhausting" (p. 86) — a bodily criterion of decoration that follows the Beechers' conveniences (1869) and anticipates de Wolfe's occupant-centred light-placement (1913); his defence of "rooms which are somewhat dark in tone" and condemnation of over-bright, reflective surfaces extend comfort from provision (light, heat) to stimulation (see repose).
• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — comfort's grotto genealogy and its sensorial promotion: the found grotto's thermal comfort is the concept's oldest architecture — "The combination of flowing water, earth as a thermal sink, and deep shadows that maintained the space cool and fresh made it a most desirable space in the Mediterranean climate" — while the Roman version converts comfort into display ("refuge for sensorial delights and leisure indicative of its patron's wealth"). The contemporary chapters of the concept: Vals's baths "programmed for relaxation and sensorial awakening," SOL Grotto's tubes that "infuse the space with cool air, provided by the Venturi effect, rather than the thermal sink of the moist earth," and Bienvenidos al Sur's "no continuous weather or thermal boundary, just a thicket." The register's move: comfort promoted from service (de Wolfe's regulated heat) to medium — coolness, moisture, and immersion as the interior's expressive content (see ambient-conditioning).
• Toward the immaterial interior (Jacobus 2018) — comfort's mechanization history: Giedion's contrast of the two grounds of spatial comfort — the Middle Ages, where comfort was "in large part determined by the unity of the proportions, materials, and form of the room's shell" (small furniture "not a dominating factor in the perception of the room's spatial presence"), against the nineteenth century, where attainable small objects prompted "a rush to fill spaces with them" and "Habitation areas no longer needed to be strongly defined spatial realms in order to elicit comfort. Space had become neutral, a backdrop for the smaller designed objects that began to dominate our lives." The concept's ground thus migrates from the room's shell to its objects as machine production replaces handcraft — "By the middle of the nineteenth century, human perceptual comforts were no longer dictated by space that is bound in the physical" (see mechanization, dematerialization).
• From Wiener Kunst im Hause to the Wiener Werkstätte (Houze 2002/2006) — comfort's Viennese-national form and its textile technique: Gemütlichkeit — "a kind of cozy comfort" — as the defining characteristic of "a 'true Viennese interior'" (p. 156; see gemutlichkeit), Loos's "warm and livable" interior the same desire in modern dress ("This interior must be comforting and sensual, allowing the viewer or inhabitant to respond to it physically and psychologically," p. 159); and the technique of its recovery — "a domestic comfort was recovered in Vienna at the turn of the century by physically wrapping living spaces in pieces of embroidered cloth" (p. 160). Where the wiki's Anglo-American sources specify comfort as provision (de Wolfe's lights, the Beechers' conveniences), the Viennese source makes comfort atmospheric and enveloping — the interior as garment, see interior-as-garment — and locates its production in women's needlework: fashion "provided a space for women to engage physically, either as designers or consumers, with the aestheticization of themselves and their living spaces through cloth and needlework" (p. 160).
• 'House Beautiful': Style and Consumption in the Home (Madigan & Munro 1996/2006) — comfort's popular ideal and its moral entanglement: the plush furnishing that "imparts a feeling of comfort, luxury and indulgence which is important to many people's ideal of 'home,' but conflicts with a designer view of style, and no doubt 'good taste'" (p. 222) — comfort, luxury and indulgence as the mass-consumer's operative triad, images drawn "from both Hollywood and the country house" (p. 222); use-value's bodily content — "the belief that things should be selected for utility and comfort competing with the desire for things which are new and look new" (p. 226); and comfort's reconciliation with the moral standard — "A common strategy of dealing with the potential conflict between the notion of home as a place of comfort and relaxation and the high standards of housekeeping required, is to reconcile the two in the notion that it is impossible to be relaxed or comfortable in a house that does not meet the high standard of cleanliness and tidiness desired. This, of course, implies a burden of constant effort to maintain these standards" (p. 225). Where de Wolfe specifies comfort as provision and the editors read it as resistance, Madigan & Munro show comfort as the product of disciplined labour — the woman's housework made the precondition of the home's own ease (see respectability, gender-and-the-interior, homeliness).
• Living in Glass Houses (Melchionne 1998/2006) — comfort's two thresholds, the concept's aesthetic-philosophical placement. The subordination threshold: the Glass House is unlivable "not necessarily because it is aesthetically displeasing, but because it subordinates all other goals to this aesthetic pleasure" (pp. 228–229) — comfort is the first of the goals subordinated; and the source's formula for the deficit: "The Glass House lacks what we judge today as livability: comfort, casualness, and a certain degree of dowdy familiarity" (p. 229) — comfort promoted into the aesthetic judgment itself (perceived livability as "part of the attractiveness of an interior"). The Johnson quip, the concept's most cited provocation: "'comfort is a function of whether you think a chair is good-looking or not'" (p. 230, via Rybczynski) — comfort collapsed into aesthetic agreement, the radical aesthete's claim that a chair one finds beautiful is a comfortable chair. The register completes the wiki's comfort sequence: Hope's essential tier, de Wolfe's provision, Baldwin's heart, the Beechers' economy, Madigan & Munro's moral product — and now the reductio: comfort as pure agreement with the designed scheme, the point at which the concept either dissolves into aesthetics or shows its independence from it ("The spaces demand too much," p. 231). See homeliness, glass-house, hyperorganized-environment.
• The Kitchen as a Place to Be (Potter 1990/2006) — comfort's workshop register, stated as a redefinition of the efficiency criterion the comfort tradition never separated it from: "The Penton kitchen is efficient to the extent that it gives pleasure, and a positive sense of location to its concerns – of being in and with them" (p. 266) — pleasure and locatedness ("being in and with" one's concerns) as the working room's operative goods, specified against the labour-saving comfort ("the highly generalised and frictionless modern kitchen in which time and labour saving comes first," p. 266). And comfort's minimum named as feel rather than provision: "At least the feel of a kitchen might militate in that direction" (p. 265) — where de Wolfe's comfort is placed lights and regulated heat, Potter's is the room's felt quality carrying "process, ritual, and continuity" (p. 268). Comfort here is neither service (de Wolfe), heart (Baldwin), economy (Beecher) nor livability (Melchionne) but engagement: the designed room as the medium of valued practice. See kitchen, everyday-life, work-leisure-distinction.
• Home: Territory and Identity (Wise 2000/2006) — comfort's territorial register, the concept elevated from room-criterion to home's defining effect: "Home, as I am using it, is the creation of a space of comfort (a never-ending process), often in opposition to those very forces" (pp. 394–395); and the Deleuze-and-Guattari housewife — "it is the whistling and comfort-effect that is home, not the house necessarily" (p. 395) — comfort-effect as home's content, detached from any building; the recreated feel as comfort's portability: "might recreate a similar space, a similar home, with a similar feel (a sense of light, of leisure, of tension) in the next place" (p. 393). Where the wiki's comfort tradition specifies provision (de Wolfe), economy (the Beechers), posture (Wagner), livability (Melchionne) and engagement (Potter), Wise specifies the effect — comfort as what a territory expresses when it becomes home, "a never-ending process" rather than a secured state. And Rybczynski's chapter-list ("…comfort and wellbeing") recorded as the normative foil — comfort named as the home's last proper chapter (p. 395). See home, milieu.

Open Questions

• Is comfort a criterion or a class artifact? De Wolfe specifies comfort for occupants of "over-magnificent hotels and residences" and her own houses; the Beechers secure comfort by economy. Does the concept have a general form, or is every comfort specification a class position?
• Madigan & Munro show comfort governed by the moral standard of the household: "it is impossible to be relaxed or comfortable in a house that does not meet the high standard of cleanliness and tidiness desired" (p. 225) — comfort made the product of constant housekeeping effort, borne by women. Does this reconcile with or refute the wiki's comfort-as-resistance reading (the editors' "political form of resistance towards patriarchy")? Is comfort a provision (de Wolfe), a heart (Baldwin), an economy (Beecher) — or a moral achievement whose labour cost the designer tradition never names? See respectability, gender-and-the-interior.
• Comfort appears in this wiki as a room-scale provision (de Wolfe's lights, Baldwin's fires) and as a building-scale technology (the McClures' air-conditioned seal). What is the relation — does the decorator's occupant-centred comfort survive the engineer's systematised comfort, or does the sealed building finally make comfort something the occupant cannot read or control (de Wolfe's hotel chimney)?
• The editors make comfort political — "a political form of resistance towards patriarchy within the social and design spheres." Is comfort a feminist claim (the woman's expertise in the body's provision) or the domestication of design into service?
• Comfort versus tranquillity: de Wolfe's design secures "tranquillity" — is rest the right end-state for a room, against the everyday's liveliness that other wiki sources (Lefebvre, de Certeau) theorize?
• Dresser separates rest from dullness ("the highest sense of repose… may be realised where the brightest colours are employed") and grounds it physiologically ("the constant endurance of excitement is exhausting") — does comfort therefore include a stimulation budget (excitement "endurable… if sparingly indulged in") alongside its provision of light and heat? And is the designed room's optimum a state (repose) or a rate (spare excitement)? See repose.

(Note: the hotel-chimney anecdote — "the chimney had never had a fire in it and the proprietor would rather not take such a risk!" — is the excerpt's comic emblem of comfort systems installed but unusable.)