EBOOK
About
"Winner of the inaugural Architecture Book of the Year Award, Technical Category" Daniel A. Barber is professor of architecture at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War.
How climate influenced the design strategies of modernist architects
Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture. Focusing on the period surrounding World War II-before fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning became widely available-Daniel Barber brings to light a vibrant and dynamic architectural discussion involving design, materials, and shading systems as means of interior climate control. He looks at projects by well-known architects such as Richard Neutra, Le Corbusier, Lúcio Costa, Mies van der Rohe, and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and the work of climate-focused architects such as MMM Roberto, Olgyay and Olgyay, and Cliff May. Drawing on the editorial projects of James Marston Fitch, Elizabeth Gordon, and others, he demonstrates how images and diagrams produced by architects helped conceptualize climate knowledge, alongside the work of meteorologists, physicists, engineers, and social scientists. Barber describes how this novel type of environmental media catalyzed new ways of thinking about climate and architectural design.
Extensively illustrated with archival material, Modern Architecture and Climate provides global perspectives on modern architecture and its evolving relationship with a changing climate, showcasing designs from Latin America, Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. This timely and important book reconciles the cultural dynamism of architecture with the material realities of ever-increasing carbon emissions from the mechanical cooling systems of buildings and offers a historical foundation for today's zero-carbon design. "A rare opportunity to look closer at modernists' environmental ethics and not just their aesthetics - and a timely reference for our worsening climate crisis."---Diana Budds, Curbed "The premise of [Modern Architecture and Climate] is this: The battle for the supremacy of air conditioning above all other solutions for climate mitigation was, in fact, a battle . . . [it] spanned continents, political ideologies, and architectural discourses…What makes Barber's book so interesting is not only the meticulous documentation of…climate-control alternatives and their practitioners, but the tension between their goals and their underlying ideologies. . . . The lesson from Barber's book is not to replicate the conditions that begat yesterday's missed opportunities, but to change them for the better."---Kate Wagner, The Architect's Newspaper "It's easy to think of Modernism as inseparable from air conditioning, simply because we are surrounded by so much of it that is. A valuable reminder that this wasn't always the case is provided in Daniel A. Barber's Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning, which outlines the story of the febrile, flexible, and often-forgotten early experiments in climate control."---Anthony Paletta, Metropolis "[Modern Architecture and Climate] offers . . . the most comprehensive and concise corrective to the reigning histories of Modernism that have tended to exclude, or at least consider only superficially, environmental context."---Russell Fortmeyer, Architectural Record "[An] erudite work…Heavily illustrated and deeply researched. . . . Academics, urban planners, and environmental designers will most appreciate this thought-provoking and detailed volume." "Modern Architecture and Climate is a fresh and original history that chronicles the intense research undertaken by designers to ada
How climate influenced the design strategies of modernist architects
Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture. Focusing on the period surrounding World War II-before fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning became widely available-Daniel Barber brings to light a vibrant and dynamic architectural discussion involving design, materials, and shading systems as means of interior climate control. He looks at projects by well-known architects such as Richard Neutra, Le Corbusier, Lúcio Costa, Mies van der Rohe, and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and the work of climate-focused architects such as MMM Roberto, Olgyay and Olgyay, and Cliff May. Drawing on the editorial projects of James Marston Fitch, Elizabeth Gordon, and others, he demonstrates how images and diagrams produced by architects helped conceptualize climate knowledge, alongside the work of meteorologists, physicists, engineers, and social scientists. Barber describes how this novel type of environmental media catalyzed new ways of thinking about climate and architectural design.
Extensively illustrated with archival material, Modern Architecture and Climate provides global perspectives on modern architecture and its evolving relationship with a changing climate, showcasing designs from Latin America, Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. This timely and important book reconciles the cultural dynamism of architecture with the material realities of ever-increasing carbon emissions from the mechanical cooling systems of buildings and offers a historical foundation for today's zero-carbon design. "A rare opportunity to look closer at modernists' environmental ethics and not just their aesthetics - and a timely reference for our worsening climate crisis."---Diana Budds, Curbed "The premise of [Modern Architecture and Climate] is this: The battle for the supremacy of air conditioning above all other solutions for climate mitigation was, in fact, a battle . . . [it] spanned continents, political ideologies, and architectural discourses…What makes Barber's book so interesting is not only the meticulous documentation of…climate-control alternatives and their practitioners, but the tension between their goals and their underlying ideologies. . . . The lesson from Barber's book is not to replicate the conditions that begat yesterday's missed opportunities, but to change them for the better."---Kate Wagner, The Architect's Newspaper "It's easy to think of Modernism as inseparable from air conditioning, simply because we are surrounded by so much of it that is. A valuable reminder that this wasn't always the case is provided in Daniel A. Barber's Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning, which outlines the story of the febrile, flexible, and often-forgotten early experiments in climate control."---Anthony Paletta, Metropolis "[Modern Architecture and Climate] offers . . . the most comprehensive and concise corrective to the reigning histories of Modernism that have tended to exclude, or at least consider only superficially, environmental context."---Russell Fortmeyer, Architectural Record "[An] erudite work…Heavily illustrated and deeply researched. . . . Academics, urban planners, and environmental designers will most appreciate this thought-provoking and detailed volume." "Modern Architecture and Climate is a fresh and original history that chronicles the intense research undertaken by designers to ada