Modern “sustainable” innovations in architecture are not slowed down, but the survival of old knowledge and techniques that can be found in traditional architecture could offer better solutions.
This is the argument of architectural historian Professor Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder in their new book Form follows the fuel: 14 buildings from antiquity to oil age. The authors argue that the energy availability was the greatest impact on architecture throughout the history of humanity.
Her extensive study is the first to calculate energy inputs for a number of historical buildings and shows how different fuel types, from human work to fossil fuels, have basically determined building designs in civilizations and eras.
“The history of architecture can be told as a story of energy,” the authors explain. “Accordingly, today's architecture is the result of four centuries of effort, innovation and ingenuity that aim to maximize the proportion of architectural production and operation that could be powered by fossil fuels.”
This argument comes to a critical moment in architectural history, since the construction sector currently constitutes 37% of all human climate -changing emissions. Despite decades of research and discussion, the environmental impact of buildings continues to increase.
Urban and Calder document how the publisher of fossil fuels begins in the 17th century and the architecture changed deeper than any other development in the history of mankind. This transition turned over the previous dynamics, in which the work was cheap and warm and created an architectural model that depended on energy -intensive materials and processes that reduced human input.
“If form follows the fuel, our basically an architecture of intensive consumption of fossil fuels,” explain the authors.
Even if the company of emissions and CO2 footprint becomes aware and further efforts are made to build up sustainably, the authors prove that today's architecture is catastrophically high energy costs. They explain how influential minimalist constructions often depend on the massive energy consumption, for example the Seagram building in New York, which is widespread for its simplicity, an energy efficiency assessment of only 3 out of 100 from the US environmental protection authority and costs more energy to build the entire routes to build 5 -m stones on the stones.
“Mies' famous dictum that” less is more “is missing:” Less is more carbon, “explain the authors.” Each energy per square meter of floor space consumed four times as much energy as the average American office building in 2012. “
In contrast, pre -modern buildings such as the Scottish Schwarzhaus achieved remarkable thermal efficiency with only local materials and passive design strategies. Examples of such buildings show how people have always been able to offer the interior and thermal comfort that is needed for survival in a tough climate and at the same time was fully sustainable and recyclable.
The authors' studies include 4,500 years of architectural history, from the great pyramid from Giza to the International Airport Kuala Lumpur.
The authors offer practical solutions for contemporary architects by solving the specific energy costs of different building elements and materials. For example, their research shows how structural stone rentals have used significantly less energy throughout their life cycle than similar brick buildings, which provides quantifiable metrics to inform modern sustainable design decisions.
Professor Urban says: “In terms of energy consumption, the world has never had so many pharaohs. Not only special buildings such as the SEAGRAM, but even our everyday buildings consume more energy than the most extraordinary structures in the old world.”
As an architect and political decision -makers, looking for solutions for the climate emergency, Form follows the fuel The assumptions about sustainability always have technological progress and offer an alternative approach to carbon architecture.
“The historical living conditions without fossil fuels often look like poverty for those who live in today's high -energy societies,” explain the authors, “but while luxury goods were sparse and poorly distilled, materials native and technologically comparatively easy for most non -fossil buildings.
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