All Doors Lead to the Kitchen – Sustainability and Wellbeing Challenges in a Shared Centrepiece of Living

The kitchen figures a central place in the home where a significant share of a household’s resource consumption takes place. Sharing the kitchen between multiple households has potential to bring positive sustainability effects due to more efficient use of both material resources and energy. The concept of shared kitchens has, however, thus far had a limited diffusion. This paper explores the potential of shared kitchens as a future sustainable living environment by studying user experiences from a Living Lab setting. It builds the base for an overarching larger European collaboration on how future shared kitchens should be designed in order to support everyday practices while optimising the conditions for achieving positive impact on both sustainability and wellbeing. Findings are presented from five focus areas concerning different use contexts: (1) accessing, (2) cooking, (3) living and socialising, (4) storing, and (5) cleaning

Shifting Home Energy Consumption Through a Holistic Understanding of the Home System of Practice

This chapter describes the concept of the home system of practice, which can be used to provide a deeper understanding of the social system of the home and inform long-term solutions for enabling domestic energy reduction. More traditional methods have attempted to persuade occupants to change behaviour through the use of information campaigns and feedback technology. However, these interventions are usually short lived as they ignore the underlying reasons for practices to occur. A more effective solution is through practice-oriented design, which co-creates innovative technology with the user. In addition, the emergence and use of automated technology enables practices to act independently of the user. Yet, the success of automation is also reliant on an understanding of the home system of practice, occupant needs and skills

How moving home influences appliance ownership: a Passivhaus case study

Low carbon dwellings shift the focus to electricity consumption and appliances by significantly lowering space heating energy consumption. Using a UK Passivhaus (low carbon) case study, interviews and pre/post-move-in appliance audits were employed to investigate how moving home can change the appliance requirements of appliance-using practices. Changes in appliance ownership were due to differences in how appliance-using practices (e.g. cooking, laundering, homemaking) were being performed. Existing/new appliances complemented/conflicted with a new home on the basis of whether the social meanings of specific appliance-using practices (e.g. stylishness, convenience, thermal comfort, cleanliness) could be met. This was evident, when moving home more generally, by households buying new modern appliances and managing spatial constraints. More specifically, regarding Passivhaus, hosting and homemaking practices were performed in ways that met thermal comfort expectations, in addition to appliance purchasing also being influenced by a fear that the Passivhaus technologies could fail. Whilst skills and competences were needed to perform appliance-using practices, these were less prominent in influencing appliance ownership changes. Conclusions include reflections on how the elements of appliance-using practices change when moving home, as well as what adhering to building standards could mean for the standardisation of appliance-using practices and domestic life more generally

Managing professional jurisdiction and domestic energy use

Professionals involved in organizing and undertaking domestic works, such as extensions, maintenance and refurbishment, have an important role in influencing how homes are configured and how occupants live within them. Despite this, the professional identities of these actors, and their impact on domestic energy use, is often overlooked. In response, this paper argues that one useful way of examining their influence is to consider how professional identities shape everyday working practices in relation to clients. Data from two UK interview and observation studies are combined: one with heating installers and the other with architects. The data are analysed using concepts from Abbott’s ‘system of professions’ framework that focuses on how the routine working practices of professional groups are born of how they see themselves and the tasks for which they are responsible. This comparison provides insights into how these two groups manage their professional ‘jurisdictions’ during their client interactions and what this means for policy-makers and industry representatives hoping to influence their work in pursuit of less carbon-intensive living. It also points to the value of further in-depth studies that explore how the routine management of professional jurisdiction impacts upon domestic energy use in a range of contexts

Householders’ Mental Models of Domestic Energy Consumption: Using a Sort-And-Cluster Method to Identify Shared Concepts of Appliance Similarity

If in-home displays and other interventions are to successfully influence people's energy consumption, they need to communicate about energy in terms that make sense to users. Here we explore householders' perceptions of energy consumption, using a novel combination of card-sorting and clustering to reveal shared patterns in the way people think about domestic energy consumption. The data suggest that, when participants were asked to group appliances which they felt naturally 'went together', there are relatively few shared ideas about which appliances are conceptually related. To the extent participants agreed on which appliances belonged together, these groupings were based on activities (e.g., entertainment) and location within the home (e.g., kitchen); energy consumption was not an important factor in people's categorisations. This suggests messages about behaviour change aimed at reducing energy consumption might better be tied to social practices than to consumption itself

Exploring health behaviour:Understanding drinking practice using the lens of practice theory

Research suggests that there is no safe amount of alcohol but despite this alcohol consumption remains an important part of many [young] people’s lives. Viewed as an inherently social activity drinking alcohol provides an opportunity for socialising and connecting with friends. This study is one of the first to draw on practice theory to explore one type of intoxicated drinking occasion engaged in by young people; framed in this paper as a ‘proper night out’. This article argues that this hybrid entity is made up of a series of interconnected social practices that have come and now hang together to serve to normalise and routinize intoxicated drinking occasions. The operationalisation of practice theory has enabled an in-depth exploration of intoxicated drinking and provides the potential for new ways of intervening in harmful drinking practices by refocusing attention away from individual level decision making to drinking practices

Combining energy efficiency measure approaches and occupancy patterns in building modelling in the UK residential context

The UK faces a significant retrofit challenge, especially with its housing stock of old, hard-to-treat solid walled dwellings. In this work, we investigate the delivery of heated thermal comfort with a lower energy demand through four types of energy efficiency interventions: passive system, conversion device, method of service control, and level of service demanded. These are compared for three distinct household occupancy patterns, corresponding to a working family, a working couple and a daytime-present couple. Energy efficiency measures are considered singly and in combination, to study whether multiple lower cost measures can achieve comparable savings to higher cost individual measures. Scenarios are simulated using engineering building modelling software TRNSYS with data taken from literature. Upgraded insulation of wall and roof resulted in highest savings in all occupancy scenarios, but comparable savings were calculated for reduced internal temperature and partial spatial heating in scenarios in which the house is not at maximum capacity. Zonal heating control is expected to achieve greatest savings for the working couple who had a flexible occupancy pattern. The results from this modelling work show the extent to which energy consumption depends on the appropriate matching between energy efficiency measures and occupant type