Dis/comfort : rethinking comfort through intentional discomfort in architecture

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the relationship between comfort and discomfort in architectural design, challenging the assumption that comfort is inherently desirable or ideologically neutral. Framed as an interpretive, qualitative, and subjective study, it draws on theoretical critique and focus group discussions to explore how design not only responds to human needs but actively scripts behaviour, emotion, and experience. Rather than asking what makes a space comfortable, the research asks: what does comfort conceal, and what might discomfort offer? Dis | comfort is examined not as a binary but as a relational spectrum, emotional, embodied, and deeply contextual. It explores states of being comfortably uncomfortable, embracing controlled friction to heighten presence, and uncomfortably comfortable, feeling pacified or numb in spaces designed to please. The theoretical study traces how modernist ideals of “Good Design” promoted standardised, sanitised environments that prioritised efficiency over complexity, often dulling emotional and sensory engagement. This logic found its most intimate expression in the hyper-domestic, where the spaces we inhabit daily become sites of over-protection and concealment from reality. Conversely, discomfort emerges as a site of resistance, agency, and reawakening. The study explores how discomfort, when consciously navigated or designed, can provoke deeper connection to space and experience. This work proposes dis | comfort not as an error to fix, but as a method, a way of rethinking architecture through subjectivity, sensation, and the rituals of everyday life. Ultimately, it invites a reframing of spatial experience, prioritising lived experience over passive existence.