“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” That famous quote by Winston Churchill provides a fitting introduction to Lisa Heschong’s Thermal Delight in Architecture. In this small but illuminating book, Heschong shows us that comfort is more than a matter of temperature. Architecture, she argues, is not just a technical response to heat or cold – it is a cultural expression of how people in a particular climate choose to live, to feel, and to come together.

Heschong takes us on a journey through thermal comfort as a sensory experience. She describes how cultures throughout history have devised creative solutions to adapt to their environment: the hanging of wall tapestries after winter, which both insulate and beautify. The inglenook – an intimate niche by the hearth where warm conversations could unfold. The colonial gazebos, light, shaded and inherently social. No standardized systems, but brilliant, locally grounded inventions. Solutions that were not only technically clever, but above all culturally resonant.

A central metaphor in the book is that of astronaut food. In theory, you could condense all necessary nutrients into a grey paste and survive just fine. But what happens to taste, scent, texture, color? To the joy of dining, the sharing of meals, the beauty of the ritual? The same thing happens to buildings that maintain a constant 21 degrees everywhere – in the bedroom, the garage, the shopping mall, the office. Technically perfect. Culturally bankrupt.

Heschong makes it clear that thermal comfort becomes meaningful through contrast: the shift from cold to warmth, from shadow to sunlight, from outside to in. That rhythm is what gives architecture its poetry. The warmth of sunlight on a stone wall, the cool breeze through a half-open window, the coziness of a blanket on a cold morning. These are deeply human experiences – and they create memories that no air conditioning system can replace.

This book is a call to revalue comfort as a cultural dimension. Not as a nuisance to be engineered away, but as an opportunity to weave experience, beauty, and identity into buildings. In a time where sustainability often equates to technical optimization, Heschong reminds us that warmth, too, needs meaning.