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Architecture Building and Energy from Prehistory to the Present /anglais
From the humblest Barratt home to the most spectacular ziggurat, buildings in every era and every place have been shaped by the energy available for their construction. In this utterly original and compelling guide, Barnabas Calder tells the history of architecture through the prism of energy usage. We now have access to more energy than we could ever need, and so design buildings that go far beyond practicality. Calder explores what this means for our architecture, and surveys history's most influential architects and structures. In the age of sustainable design and impact reduction, The Story of Architecture offers a fresh and timely perspective on our buildings and the creative ingenuity we pour into them.
544 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 25, 2022
This new generation of Pelican editions are great. I’ve really gotten something substantial from every one I’ve read so far and this offering delivers on all fronts and maintains the high standard the rest have set. Starting at the oldest known city in the world in Uruk, Iraq, Calder sets off on a journey going through the Mayan and Egyptian civilizations as well as the Greeks and Persians, the Romans and Song dynasty building up a pleasing and varied timeline of architectural history that leads us through various Islamic incarnations and variations.
He illustrates the difference between Opus incertum, reticulatum and latericum (apparently the last two cost considerably less labour). We also get plenty of photos and illustrations throughout this book which really help to keep us involved in the subject. When talking of Roman society he says that, “The hierarchical tendencies of agrarian societies ensured, in other words, that however rich the city as a whole, the majority remained poor.” Now how many cities in how many countries could that apply to today?...
Calder really get an idea for the level of knowledge, precision and craftsmanship involved, as well as the relationship between energy and engineering, and how many of these incredible structures were completed through a series of highly sophisticated, and not so sophisticated, means, with many of them still enduring today in one form or another.
We then wind our way the Little Ice Age, the Black Death, the Italian renaissance and the Reformation. Focusing on the UK where coal and canals fuelled the Industrial Revolution, which saw cities like Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow grow in population and production as they literally became northern powerhouses supplying quality goods across the world.
All of this progress came at a price, as ever paid disproportionately by the poorest in society, “Due to the pressures of urbanization and terrible housing conditions, almost two thirds of children born in mid-eighteenth century London were dead before their fifth birthday.”
“In the first half of the nineteenth century, the worst slums in Liverpool offered conditions even worse for many residents than pre-Black Death peasant houses. These new working classes had considerably more spending money than their peasant ancestors, but this could not compensate for lethal levels of overcrowding, disease and pollution”
By the time we get to the 20th Century it was all about concrete, glass, steel and a thing called electricity, these all converged to make a phenomenal impact on the world. These would allow tectonic shifts throughout all aspects of modern life. These were later followed by the likes of aluminium and plastic. We learn that the USA was the world’s biggest economy throughout the 20th century, using 4.4 billion tonnes of cement during that time. Between 2011-13 China used 6.4 billion tonnes.
“The politically advantaged attempted to silence the disenfranchised at home by endowing them with a sense of superiority to slaves abroad.”
Calder takes some crucial aspects of the environment, economics and politics and threads them together creating a rich and colourful picture, whilst always remaining engaging and accessible. At times this a delight to read. Calder’s ability to translate a lot of information across many disciplines without losing coherence is a joy, he brings them all together beautifully in an act that is a lot more difficult than it looks. The editing is top notch too and overall this was a hugely enjoyable journey and this is surely essential reading for those who are drawn to any of the subjects covered.
July 3, 2021
Architecture from Pre History to Climate Emergency
Fantastically interesting book that looks at the history of architecture through the lense of energy supply. The author differentiates between three energy systems, foraging, agriculture and fossil fuel. In the period covered by part 1, energy means crops and human/animal strength that they fed or the heat of new grown fire fuels. In part 2 food and fuel are still needed to keep, but to a much lesser extent than fossil fuels. Coal was the first fossil fuel to be used, as it was much more energy dense than wood and so less woodland was needed for the same amount of energy supply. Steam engines had arrived.
Also, I think accidentally, this books really conveys how crazy the technology of WW1 was to people living in 1890-1910s. It described the reality of the everyday persons dwelling throughout history and ofc also the super wealthy. And he documents well the transition from wood cooking to coal, to petroleum in a way that feels more tangible than I have previously read. The final chapter adds a hopeful note on the possibility of a transition to a lower energy model of architecture and this does seem possible after being guided through millenia of energy innovation and the speed at which it occured.
Some particularly fascinating facts:
Intro
* Energy is the capacity to do anything. Without it nothing can be heated up or moved, nourished or destroyed. The total sum of human activity has always been constrained by the total amoutn of energy humanity could harness.
* Human actions shaped by available emergy: heat, muscle power, mechanical power of steam, internal combustion engines and electrical energy
* Any form of energy can be measured in joules/calories/kilowatt hours
* Coal and oil are bery energy dense. A tonne of oil can replace over 150,000 hrs of human labour or over 19,000 eight hour shifts. This works out as 50 slaves per human being on the planet (although not equally distributed)
* Architecture in terms of energy
* Human societies have been based on three energy systems so far: foraging, farming and fossil fuels
* What role did the energy context have in shaping the architecture?
Chapter 2:
* Reasons for a wall around a city: military defence & social and economic control - keeping crimjnals out, effective guard to make sure taxes are paid
* Mayan cities inside the rainforest had no distinction between cities and countryside, but partook in such sustainable farming methods that the elite could build large scale cinstruction and be supported.
* great monuments of farming societies exhibit labour in proportionto fertifiligy of land
* nurturing sophisticated crafts = needs stable energy surplus to support generations of craft tradition
* shared human enjoyment of symmetry reflected in architecture over millenia
Chapter 3
* architecture has always borrowed from the past, tendency to assume golden years are in the past in common in agarian societies, where weather, crop fertility and disease are unknown and so energy supply is uncertainty
Chapter 4
* Peak monumental construction in Rome occured during a period that climate historians report as having seen exceptionally reliable and fertile Nile floods, offering an unusually good crop yield even by Egyptian standards
* infrastructure: repays energy cost of labour by improving the functioning of a cities energy system
* standardization of production: negates impact of worker having a bad day and messing up, train new labourers faster = employ the poor with minimal training, makes preparation more labour intensive but then building easier
* Rome: “A large population made it actibelt desirable to give extensive low-skilled employment to very large numbers of the poor, so designing to require workforces of thousands of labourers was a good idea.”
* “The operation of bathhouses in every Roman city has been suggested as a significant contributor to deforestation around the Mediterranean under the Roman empire… total consumption of firewood for bathhouses in a big city = 8000 trees of 25m trees each year!
Chapter 6
* Apparent collapse of social complexity in western europe after romans due to underlying energy changes
* bubonic plague wiped out a third to half population and lead to drop in quantity and complexity of agriculture, for example in France legumes fell out of use despite their value in replenishing nitrogen, animal drawn equip became simpler and skeletons of draught animals shrunk by 50% = probably less food to spare. Reflected by ambition of architecture
Chapter 7
* for much or history, after the black plague, in Europe, farmers would have lived in Blackhouses. These had a fire pit in the center and very few windows and no chimney. A chimney is a nice idea, but wastes 1/8 of heat made by fire. Farmers could not afford to gather 8x more fuel than needed = smoke free interiors were an unaffordable luxury = lung disease was a strong cause of death
* Medieval eye would have been suprised by georgian cities: they consisted of large,sparse and uniform buildings. In the medieval context of cheaper labour and pricuee materials, opulajce was shown in abundant carving and painting, whereas Georgian houses were composed of brick walls. Churches had lost their importance and had not kept the proportional dominance to the cityscape in terms of quanity or size relative to the many new big houses. Houses had gotten bigger, but churches had stayed the same size
* Coal fuelled industries provided the energy that allowed for colonial expansion and assymetrical power allowing slavery
* Drop in crop yields due to coolinf climate, but black death had wiped out enough of the population to allow restructuring of the energy model. Colonial exploitation lead to more resilient crops and revolutionized previously unproductive land.
* Heating and cooking heat needed in cities
* Prior to the industrial revolution, northern Europe had had less energy and thus been poorer than southern Europe.
* Coal was more energy dense than wood and so the move from firewood to coal
* The switch to Coal allowed glass production to be improved and so more people got access to windows
* All these open fires = many FIRES
* Previously gone since Roman Britain, fired brick made a comeback in the 16th century for the rich and in the 17th century often used as a fire proof membrane around the outside of a structure to stop fire spreading to neighbours. This fire proofing became compulsory after the Great Fire of London.
* The age of architecture in which very high operational energy costs are met by fossil fuels had started. It has not yet ended.
* Revolutionary thing about fossil fuel energy source: the more you use, the more you can invest in new coal mines ect and thus the cheaper it will become to use; limit removed (other than climate change)
Chapter 11
* Before electricity, factories only had one source of power so all machines were grouped in one area. It was easier to move good than to move power. With the dawn of electricity, cables could be run anywhere and machines assembled into an assembly line that made sense.
Chapter 12
* Often new low carbon buildings advertise all the ammenities they have, but “greenwash” over the fact that the raw materials and their construction required so many resources.
Fantastically interesting book that looks at the history of architecture through the lense of energy supply. The author differentiates between three energy systems, foraging, agriculture and fossil fuel. In the period covered by part 1, energy means crops and human/animal strength that they fed or the heat of new grown fire fuels. In part 2 food and fuel are still needed to keep, but to a much lesser extent than fossil fuels. Coal was the first fossil fuel to be used, as it was much more energy dense than wood and so less woodland was needed for the same amount of energy supply. Steam engines had arrived.
Also, I think accidentally, this books really conveys how crazy the technology of WW1 was to people living in 1890-1910s. It described the reality of the everyday persons dwelling throughout history and ofc also the super wealthy. And he documents well the transition from wood cooking to coal, to petroleum in a way that feels more tangible than I have previously read. The final chapter adds a hopeful note on the possibility of a transition to a lower energy model of architecture and this does seem possible after being guided through millenia of energy innovation and the speed at which it occured.
Some particularly fascinating facts:
Intro
* Energy is the capacity to do anything. Without it nothing can be heated up or moved, nourished or destroyed. The total sum of human activity has always been constrained by the total amoutn of energy humanity could harness.
* Human actions shaped by available emergy: heat, muscle power, mechanical power of steam, internal combustion engines and electrical energy
* Any form of energy can be measured in joules/calories/kilowatt hours
* Coal and oil are bery energy dense. A tonne of oil can replace over 150,000 hrs of human labour or over 19,000 eight hour shifts. This works out as 50 slaves per human being on the planet (although not equally distributed)
* Architecture in terms of energy
* Human societies have been based on three energy systems so far: foraging, farming and fossil fuels
* What role did the energy context have in shaping the architecture?
Chapter 2:
* Reasons for a wall around a city: military defence & social and economic control - keeping crimjnals out, effective guard to make sure taxes are paid
* Mayan cities inside the rainforest had no distinction between cities and countryside, but partook in such sustainable farming methods that the elite could build large scale cinstruction and be supported.
* great monuments of farming societies exhibit labour in proportionto fertifiligy of land
* nurturing sophisticated crafts = needs stable energy surplus to support generations of craft tradition
* shared human enjoyment of symmetry reflected in architecture over millenia
Chapter 3
* architecture has always borrowed from the past, tendency to assume golden years are in the past in common in agarian societies, where weather, crop fertility and disease are unknown and so energy supply is uncertainty
Chapter 4
* Peak monumental construction in Rome occured during a period that climate historians report as having seen exceptionally reliable and fertile Nile floods, offering an unusually good crop yield even by Egyptian standards
* infrastructure: repays energy cost of labour by improving the functioning of a cities energy system
* standardization of production: negates impact of worker having a bad day and messing up, train new labourers faster = employ the poor with minimal training, makes preparation more labour intensive but then building easier
* Rome: “A large population made it actibelt desirable to give extensive low-skilled employment to very large numbers of the poor, so designing to require workforces of thousands of labourers was a good idea.”
* “The operation of bathhouses in every Roman city has been suggested as a significant contributor to deforestation around the Mediterranean under the Roman empire… total consumption of firewood for bathhouses in a big city = 8000 trees of 25m trees each year!
Chapter 6
* Apparent collapse of social complexity in western europe after romans due to underlying energy changes
* bubonic plague wiped out a third to half population and lead to drop in quantity and complexity of agriculture, for example in France legumes fell out of use despite their value in replenishing nitrogen, animal drawn equip became simpler and skeletons of draught animals shrunk by 50% = probably less food to spare. Reflected by ambition of architecture
Chapter 7
* for much or history, after the black plague, in Europe, farmers would have lived in Blackhouses. These had a fire pit in the center and very few windows and no chimney. A chimney is a nice idea, but wastes 1/8 of heat made by fire. Farmers could not afford to gather 8x more fuel than needed = smoke free interiors were an unaffordable luxury = lung disease was a strong cause of death
* Medieval eye would have been suprised by georgian cities: they consisted of large,sparse and uniform buildings. In the medieval context of cheaper labour and pricuee materials, opulajce was shown in abundant carving and painting, whereas Georgian houses were composed of brick walls. Churches had lost their importance and had not kept the proportional dominance to the cityscape in terms of quanity or size relative to the many new big houses. Houses had gotten bigger, but churches had stayed the same size
* Coal fuelled industries provided the energy that allowed for colonial expansion and assymetrical power allowing slavery
* Drop in crop yields due to coolinf climate, but black death had wiped out enough of the population to allow restructuring of the energy model. Colonial exploitation lead to more resilient crops and revolutionized previously unproductive land.
* Heating and cooking heat needed in cities
* Prior to the industrial revolution, northern Europe had had less energy and thus been poorer than southern Europe.
* Coal was more energy dense than wood and so the move from firewood to coal
* The switch to Coal allowed glass production to be improved and so more people got access to windows
* All these open fires = many FIRES
* Previously gone since Roman Britain, fired brick made a comeback in the 16th century for the rich and in the 17th century often used as a fire proof membrane around the outside of a structure to stop fire spreading to neighbours. This fire proofing became compulsory after the Great Fire of London.
* The age of architecture in which very high operational energy costs are met by fossil fuels had started. It has not yet ended.
* Revolutionary thing about fossil fuel energy source: the more you use, the more you can invest in new coal mines ect and thus the cheaper it will become to use; limit removed (other than climate change)
Chapter 11
* Before electricity, factories only had one source of power so all machines were grouped in one area. It was easier to move good than to move power. With the dawn of electricity, cables could be run anywhere and machines assembled into an assembly line that made sense.
Chapter 12
* Often new low carbon buildings advertise all the ammenities they have, but “greenwash” over the fact that the raw materials and their construction required so many resources.
November 7, 2022
This book grounds the history of architecture in its most pressing contemporary context: that of energy consumption. 39% of emissions worldwide come from buildings, in how they are constructed and how they use energy. There is absolutely no time to lose in decarbonising our built environment and this book leaves no doubt as to the necessity of facing the climate emergency through building design, construction and rigorous government policy. But it also gives hope by showing that throughout history, architecture has evolved to fit the highly complex energy needs and constraints of human development. This includes looking at where materials are sourced from, how buildings can be designed for longevity and fundamentally not being wasteful. We can and must learn these lessons if we are to have any chance of meeting net zero.
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