Limit and License

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Energy & Sustainability Daniel A Barber My path was a bit the other Limit and License way round: I decided to study architectural histoiy because I thought it would be a good Architectural historians Barnabas arena for the discussion of environmental issues. When I first started a post-graduate Calder and Daniel A Barber have programme at Yale in 2003,1 assumed there both recently published books was a robust discussion on architecture and exploring the influence of energy environment — and there was, but it was not seen as a crucial part of the discourse. on architecture. In conversation for If architects in general were not interested, AT they discuss this growing field architectural historians were even less so — though there were some great people looking into these issues. Once I started prying open the box of architecture and environment as a historical theme, it became clear that there was a rich archive just waiting to be explored. One piece of the historical archive I came Barnabas Calder What got you interested in across in the library at Yale was the catalogue the history of energy and architecture? I got for a 1958 competition for a solar house, into it in 2015, after a publisher asked me for called 'Living with the Sun'. I was perplexed a general history of architecture. I reflected on to see interest in solar house design before the the most important issues facing architecture, 1970s, when there was interest relative to the and energy use was transparently the biggest: oil crises. That set me off on my dissertation the only one where architecture's contribution research at Columbia, which eventually could be decisive in maintaining life on Earth. became a book, 'A House in the Sun: Modern So much architectural research is focused Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold on sustainability, but not much in histoiy War'. Interest in solar house heating went apart from the brief stoiy of green architecture back to before the second world war, and was or studies of vernacular building which tiy to later catalysed by concerns about energy learn technical lessons about passive climate supplies and population growth. Interest in control and local materials. Yet energy access solar houses was a sort of interdisciplinary has been the single most powerful influence arena for a broad discussion about energy on architecture at every period in human anxiety, how lifestyles would change with histoiy, from the mammoth-bone huts of the different energy sources, of strengthening Ice Age steppe — built of food waste to keep alliances through resource management, in the precious warmth of the fire — through but also as a prelude to a more focused global to modern air-conditioning systems. environmental discourse.

Architecture Buildings and Energy from Prehistory to the Present

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u Modern Architecture and Climate Design before Air Conditioning o Daniel A. Barber Pin

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Barnabas Calder When you look through an Daniel A Barber That is well put: we are If we can be inspired by modernism's energy lens the past can look surprisingly haunted by a spectre. But there is at least insistence that things can change, one of different. The vast monuments of the Roman some potential for it to be a friendly ghost, if these changes likely involves a look 'back' to Empire are morally repugnant to modern not a guiding spirit. The legacy of modernism 'vernacular' and 'traditional' strategies, to eyes — produced using slave labour to might be either an opportunity or an obstacle think about what would work in the future. celebrate a militaristic political system. Yet in to progress. On the obstacle side, the received This is one of the reasons I look forward to energy terms, even a beast of a building like legacy of modernism is a general focus on your book, for its broad historical sweep the Baths of Caracalla was built far more representation and aesthetics in determining that helps us see the thread of energy from sustainably than almost all of today's most the value of architecture, and a reliance on ancient times to the present. It also opens up effortfully ethical and green architecture. fossil-fiieled building systems, in part based another topic, around questions of retrofit Janet DeLaine's remarkable research has on the premise of a universal condition, and what to do with existing building stock. shown that 76 per cent of the volume of the that every building everywhere should be Beyond the basic premise that the most baths' materials consisted of stone and conditioned to a certain norm. There is a sort sustainable building is the one that is already minerals extracted within 20 kilometres of of path dependency that has emerged such built, I wonder if you developed some the site. Brick and lime required significant that it requires a huge effort to push back insights on how to focus practice towards the heat to produce, provided by burning wood, against this industrial practice; BREEAM and energy condition of existing buildings? but while they are so visible on the ruins they LEED metrics simply aim to repurpose it — to composed only 5.9 per cent of the volume. build more or less the same kind of building, Barnabas Calder The key lesson I've learned Of course, Roman architects avoided heat just with a more efficient system. All of the on existing buildings is that we need to keep not from ethics but because they lacked formal debates of post-modernism, equally, them unless there's a pressing reason not to. significant fossil fuels. Yet it offers both hope are reliant on heavy carbon loads; we are still The current condition of the construction and a challenge to our generation that such reaching for a real alternative. and property industries is dependent on immense, robust projects could be built of But to turn to the other legacy of modern chasing economic growth through a cycle local materials and with low heat inputs. architecture, therein lies some potential for of demolition and construction which sees If you compare that with your research on change. The Bauhaus sought new terms for serviceable blocks of flats or offices being the insoluble challenge of heating the Dessau architectural value — not only resistance to demolished and replaced every few decades Bauhaus, it offers a completely inverted ornament, but the creation of a different kind by something essentially similar — a kind of architectural history: the heroic modernists of interior space that would foster a different nightmarish fast fashion for buildings, with held to represent progressive values and kind of social relation. The premise was that an enormous carbon cost. This tends to be technological innovation are, in energy terms, design could be transformative. We risk greenwashed by claims about improved the very last models we should be emulating. falling into another kind of aesthetic heroism, operational energy performance. Yet in almost Do you share my pessimistic sense that the but there is something worth recovering here all cases the problems with the demolished aesthetic ghost of modernism is a barrier — the idea that what we need is not just a buildings' energy performance would have to sustainable architecture? I know your new kind of building, but a completely been resolvable with changes to envelope and research has uncovered early experiments on different discussion, based on new values, services rather than complete replacement, modernist passive cooling and solar energy where architecture is sensitive to questions whose carbon cost will take decades to be which may offer a more cheering view. around energy and climatic adaptation. repaid in lower operational costs.

Left 'Architecture: Buildings and Energy from Prehistoiy to the Present', by Barnabas Calder (Pelican, 368pp, £20); 'Modem Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning', by Daniel A Barber (Princeton University Press, 336pp, £50).

Right, above The Baths of Caracalla, Rome, and the single-glazed curtain walls of the Dessau Bauhaus. Its open-plan halls were made habitable in winter by coal-fired stoves.

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Moreover, new construction energy costs are The progressive ethos of modern architecture overwhelmingly carbon-intense — concrete, sought to overwhelm any and all vernacular, "If we accept that modernism is steel, glass, and transportation of materials — regional, traditional practices that preceded it. a carbon-architecture, then in while operational energy comes in large part Yet, we now see that these modern practices, from partially sustainable electricity supplies. rooted in ever-increasing use of carbon, are tiying to move past the carbon Before any demolition takes place, an not the model. Indeed they become the foil — age, knowledge of pre-carbon independent life-cycle carbon assessment the means by which we think about how to practices is worth paying some should be mandatory, proving when and how operate otherwise. The amount of accepted the replacement will repay the devastating practices and principles that we must unlearn attention to" carbon cost of demolition and construction. can be overwhelming: material choices, In a large number of cases this break-even approach to site, conceptions of the public point will come long after climate scientists and its need, relationship to development. This relationship was on the minds of warn us that the new building will be below My emphasis is squarely on relationship Brazilian architects who were part of a more sea level. Yet the UK government has just to climate, but others are making related general push to 'modernise' their country. brought in new rules allowing permission- arguments in the context of race, gender, They took design approaches to modify the free replacement of any building that the and equity. When historians look back at interior with complex, carefully tuned developer keeps empty for six months first. architecture and its history at the end of this shading systems, which were hyper-aware of You appeal for designers to see climate not decade they will see huge shifts in the terms changing solar patterns and also of people's as an obstacle but an opportunity. What key and tone of the discussion, as new priorities changing expectations and desires. lessons, big or small, would you like today's become more clear and take centre stage. How can buildings again mediate between architects to learn from the mid-centuiy More specifically, I think there are two the experience of the interior and knowledge exploration of climate-conscious design? things to take from the climatic modernists in of climatic conditions? What are the terms the 1940s and 50s. First is the basic premise and prospects for adaptability and flexibility, Daniel A Barber As someone trained in a that buildings can be finely tuned to their for thinking about how we determine what starkly critical approach, the notion of climatic conditions. Then, architects were counts as 'comfort', how we attain that applied knowledge emerging from historical trying to do this without adequate tools — standard? Since the end of the 1950s, both research is anathema: everything is situated, that is, before the computer. Today, we have air-conditioning and the standards that contingent upon its historical condition. a huge apparatus of climate-adaptive require it have led to a professional and And yet... in the midst of the crisis we face, knowledge, from orientation and shading to technical apparatus focused on a normative, new sorts of multi-disciplinary collaborations materials and variable inhabitation, all able to stable built interior. Obviously, there are and methodological experimentation is as be coordinated and tested through modeling. places where this stable condition is needed necessary as ever, and the idea of a sort of The second specific aspect of the story — — hospitals, for example, possibly museums 'applied history' doesn't sound as ridiculous thinking in particular of some of the shaded and archives. Aside from these cases, people as it used to. If we accept that modernism is buildings in Rio de Janeiro built in the 1940s can live and be comfortable in a wide range a carbon-architecture, then in trying to move and 50s — is a recognition of the flexibility of interior conditions. Societies are willing to past the carbon age, knowledge of pre-carbon and adaptability of the relationship between adjust their expectations of how to live when practices are worth paying attention to. people, buildings, and climate. placed in the context of a public good.

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Left, below MMM Roberto, Edificio Mamae, Rio de Janeiro, 1945 (ph: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Univesidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro); Solar House by Peter Lee, winning entiy to the 1958 Living with the Sun Competition; MES, Rio de Janeiro, 1943, by Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Carlos Leao et al (ph: Daniel A Barber).

Far right Cork House, Berkshire. 2019, by Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Milton, is built from solid cork blocks (ph: MBH).

Barnabas Calder Something I appreciate Even the 'democratic' experiments of about discussing this with you is that you "Lessons offered by low-energy classical Athens were limited to an oligarchy haven't given up hope that we'll find a fix. architecture of the past are of male citizens. Coal, with its high demands Sometimes the scale of the challenge of zero very appetising; the ingenuity for skilled labour, improved the lot of the carbon against such a short timescale feels industrial working classes worldwide, overwhelming to me, but I think you're with which agrarian craftspeople with social housing projects and public right that a long perspective can offer some pushed the capabilities of their educational architecture supported by left rays of hope, and important perspectives for materials is heart-lifting" and right. Oil has supported a new oligarchy considering our own immediate future. of billionaires and their corporations, with Writing about 14,000 years of world urban public space from the coal age under history has the obvious disadvantages of Some of the lessons offered by low-energy pressure from vast corporate wealth. trespassing on lots of fields, but I've been architecture of the past are very appetising. As we design our renewable energy treated with immense generosity by the real Considered in detail, the ingenuity with systems, the politics they embody — of experts in the subjects of my chapters. The which agrarian craftspeople pushed the equality or monopoly — will have lasting thing that makes me feel that a global, long- technical capabilities of their low-energy implications for the relations between people term approach to the topic is worth the materials is heart-lifting. Look at the nail-less and regions. What do you think we should struggle is that the very big shifts in the past joints of the world's capentiy traditions, be urging architects to do to make their make starkly clear how weird the present is. aimed at avoiding the disproportionate commitment to zero carbon a reality? I think Victorian architecture feels remote, but it's charcoal consumption of producing iron my two big ones would be a genuine still an architecture of heavy carbon inputs. nails, but raised to a level of craft and art that commitment to reuse and retrofit — never When you compare the past two centuries to touches the emotions. Look at the staggering demolish if you don't really have to — and fourteenth-century Mali, for example, or to structural accomplishments of Roman, stop using concrete and steel. Architecture's Achaemenid Persia, all our assumptions Byzantine and Gothic masons using largely role in shaping the aspirations of a society about material production and transport, unreinforced masonry. Look at the light also has potential to help shape aspirations about construction methods and operational footprint with which pre-Colombian Mayan for smaller, more carefully-made spaces, energy costs, suddenly feel utterly bizarre. cities could support populations of tens of more reuse of what's already there, and the Before abundant fossil fuels, the richest, most thousands in careful harmony with their beauty of not pushing for endless growth. powerful clients of the world operated within rainforest ecology. Whatever the energy The beauty of small and sustainable seems limitations that are easily disguised by the limitations, robust, beautiful architecture me to be shown at its best in the Cork House size and pomp of their buildings, but which is achievable. by Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido were real and absolute. Other lessons feel like more of a warning to Milne and Oliver Wilton, in research us, as we think through our energy systems collaboration with the Bartlett School of for the coming century. Energy systems tend Architecture, the University of Bath and to bring with them their own constricting others. Its low-footprint and calm aesthetic political tendencies. Farming societies were look like a future I'd love to live in. almost inescapably hierarchical, tending to concentrate power and energy in few hands.

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Daniel A Barber Most times in histoiy likely My point is, the 'building industry' — of felt weird, on these terms, to people living architects, city planners, engineers and "Architecture's role is to show through them but we are nonetheless at a contractors among others — is still moving different ways of life in a very specific hinge point when there is a lot forward with carbon-heavy projects; and post-carbon future and make of excitement relative to changing the way moreover, buildings have become so essential we live and build, paired with a remarkably to the premise of endless economic expansion them desirable. This is not a ossified and obstinate set of industiy practices that to question their continued growth is world of austerity, but one of and regulatory mechanisms that we can't to question the foundation of late capitalist collectivity and community" quite seem to collectively break through. society. So we have all of these ridiculous I generally agree with the two imperatives towers, in cities around the world, luxury you mention — retrofit and a resistance to apartments or Class A office space in steel steel and concrete. A few years ago Bill de and concrete, fully sealed and conditioned, Blasio, mayor of New York City, announced that sells off of green credentials through the that the city was moving forward with its addition of a thin solar film, or a turbine at Architecture's role in shaping the aspirations own Green New Deal, and went off script to the top, or some other form of sustainability of society — as you so aptly put it — is in this decry the absurdity of steel and glass towers theatre that ignores the carbon premise of the imaginary, in showing different ways of life in the age of climate change, saying, in effect, building itself. in a post-carbon future and making them no more in my city. He had to immediately In the face of all of this, and this sense that desirable. This is not a world of austerity, walk it back when the building industiy these systemic, embedded, infrastructural but one of collectivity and community, of responded with a collective guffaw — how conditions of carbon profligacy are difficult a different pace of work and leisure, of a are we expected to build, to maintain to disrupt, I cultivate my hope, such as it is markedly different relationship to the city, economic growth, to keep the city running? (I often refer to myself as an 'apocaloptimist'), forms of transportation, attention to seasonal And now we have the phenomenon of the through attention to the aspirations that you differences, etcetera. In other words, the pencil tower — super skinny residential identify at the end. Which is to say, 'we' contours of this new way of life are still to be towers that reach high into the sky, requiring (architects, engineers, policy makers, critics determined; or better, to be cultivated by not only excessive amounts of structural historians and so on), or at least some of us, architects and others interested in imagining girding but also even more intense HVAC basically know 'what to do' — we have the these futures. I see history, especially the systems to accommodate their fully sealed simulation softwares, we have the technical histoiy of environmental practices in the condition. In fact, the zoning loophole that knowledge, we have the rich legacy of field as, hopefully, fanning the flames of this allows for the height is that mechanical material experimentation. We can cultivate imagination; in showing how architects systems are not counted as floor area, so these connections to sociologists and economists have struggled with similar challenges in buildings have incentive to include massive and others who can help clarify these big the past, even veiy far back in the past, we HVAC systems over multiple 'floors' in order picture effects. We have the tools and skills, can begin to see architecture as a social and to get taller and taller — a sort of feedback and we also have the imagination. cultural practice deeply embedded both in system given that the extreme heights the techniques of climate and energy require serious conditioning on the interiors. management, and in cultivating aspirations for an as yet unknown future. A

Left Pencil towers — slim and super-tall — have become an ever more common sight on the skyline of New York City in the last decade. Early examples include 432 Park Avenue (far left), designed by Raphael Vinoly and completed in 2015. The 426-metre-high tower has a height to width ratio of 15:1. Residential floors are gathered in six groups of twelve, separated by double-height plant storeys.

Pencil towers now under construction include 111 West 57th Street, also known as the Steinway Tower, designed by SHoP Architects. Rising to 435 metres, it has a height to width ratio of 24:1.

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