Form follows fuel
4 stars
This book tells a history of architecture through its relation with energy. Summarized best with one of the book's better phrases: form follows fuel (as opposed to the design mantra of 'form follows function').
For those familiar with core energy concepts like energy density, embodied energy, and a general grasp of the history of energy, the big picture is perhaps not so exciting: as people got access to more energy, their architecture became more energy intensive.
However, the book really shines in the details of buildings it discusses: from Paleolithic mammoth-tusk huts to Zaha Hadid's contextless mega architecture, via office towers, temples, warehouses, and quays, as well as interesting historic details such as Liverpool's early elevators being powered by the city's water mains. Many of the things we now take for granted (large windows, glass, brick, metal furnishings, multi-story buildings) are the results of high-energy availability, and going …
This book tells a history of architecture through its relation with energy. Summarized best with one of the book's better phrases: form follows fuel (as opposed to the design mantra of 'form follows function').
For those familiar with core energy concepts like energy density, embodied energy, and a general grasp of the history of energy, the big picture is perhaps not so exciting: as people got access to more energy, their architecture became more energy intensive.
However, the book really shines in the details of buildings it discusses: from Paleolithic mammoth-tusk huts to Zaha Hadid's contextless mega architecture, via office towers, temples, warehouses, and quays, as well as interesting historic details such as Liverpool's early elevators being powered by the city's water mains. Many of the things we now take for granted (large windows, glass, brick, metal furnishings, multi-story buildings) are the results of high-energy availability, and going through architecture's history is a good way to realize this.
One of the overarching themes is how architectural language was deeply shaped by the affordances of materials and their relation to energy. In industrializing Britain architects struggled with that, referring to earlier periods (Classic Antiquity) aesthetically while coming to terms with new possibilities in heights, sizes, and functions of buildings. Modernism's embrace of high energy fully detached aesthetics from questions of energy sobriety, resulting in great looking yet poorly designed and expensive buildings (the discussion of the Bauhaus Workshop is instructive here) and setting us up for the global architecture of the 20th century, where everything is built out of concrete, steel and glass with a high dependence on operational energy inputs in terms of heating, cooling, lighting etc. The corollary of that is that a truly sustainable architecture, will necessitate a new aesthetics. The tight interrelation between material, form and energy that the book discusses shows that.