Trading cozy old homes for chilly new ones: How experiences and beliefs guide housing modernization in Northern Pakistan

In developing regions worldwide, building materials such as concrete, steel, and glass are replacing traditional earth, stone, and plant fibers in housing construction; likewise, new dwelling configurations are abandoning traditional forms. Together, these changes are reducing the thermal shelter provided, exposing occupants with limited energy resources to intense heat and/or cold stress. Revival of traditional methods has been suggested, but residents have rejected this approach as contrary to their desires for durability, privacy, and aesthetics. Instead, they are pursuing other actions to provide thermal survivability within their modern buildings, in roles that have previously been neglected. The purpose of this work is therefore to understand the unexplored, potentially vital human role in adapting to contemporary building methods in developing regions. Focusing on a cold climate, we first investigated twenty-three dwellings representing the 100-year housing transition in Northern Pakistan, providing extensive new field documentation. We then interviewed and observed their owner-builders to understand their thermal experiences, beliefs, and practices. Results showed that occupants actively managed their housing transitions, adopting modern elements incrementally and responding with architectural or behavioral interventions to alleviate their adverse thermal effects. Intriguingly, interventions were both guided by, and limited by, owners' concepts of underlying thermal processes. These concepts originated in sensations and observations that highlighted certain heat loss pathways, such as air leakage, but obscured others, such as conduction. This work therefore reveals, unexpectedly, that expanding owners' understanding of their buildings' thermal behaviors should be central to future efforts to address thermal stress resulting from housing modernization.