Inside OUT

<P><I>Inside OUT: Human Health and the Air-Conditioning Era</I> focuses on the enclosed environment of fully conditioned buildings, revealing a unique ecosystem with broad implications for human life and a rapidly expanding global footprint. Emphasizing the interconnections between buildings and human health, equity, and environmental sustainability, it presents an interdisciplinary, holistic analysis of the social, behavioral, and technological issues of indoor space.</P><P>Over the 20th century, advances in mechanical conditioning technologies led to the dispersion and international dominance of the sealed building envelope, which casually and progressively disconnected buildings and their occupants from local climatic, biological, and cultural environments. At the same time, humans were increasingly pushed indoors by less tangible, socially constructed forces that associated climate control with cleanliness, health, social status, and modernization.</P><P>In this volume, a multi-dis