Barnabas Calder
Form follows Fuel
online lectureArchitecture and Energy
Energy and its availability didn’t first become an issue in 2022. The history of architecture can be told in terms of the connection between energy load – material, labor, processes – and the built results. In his book Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (2021), Barnabas Calder advances the thesis that the entire history of architecture can be explained as the causal relation between building and access to energy sources: food, the human workforce, transport, and availability of building materials and fuel. In short: form follows fuel.
In Calder’s account, this history spans from Uruk via Egypt, ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages to the epic rupture caused by the utilization of fossil fuels. This enormous amount of energy, which was no longer supplied by renewable resources, upended photosynthetic constraint – a limitation imposed by reliance on materials requiring a certain amount of time to reproduce. Fossil fuels were the basis for new materials and techniques – resulting in accelerated processes of all sorts. Whether it was attributable to Le Corbusier or to Brutalism, modern architecture only became possible when inexpensive energy became available.
These processes have ultimately led to global overheating and catastrophic climate change. From the beginning of the history of humankind, the exploitation of energy sources has changed the spaces and the environment we inhabit, yet becoming all the more radical and destructive in the age of fossil fuel. The steel structures designed by Zaha Hadid and Co. for projects in China would, for instance, not have been feasible without the gigantic ore mines dug deep into Australian terrain. Because the construction sector is presently responsible for about 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions, it is urgent that we reconsider the relationship between architecture and embedded energy. In his talk, Calder will take a look at the wastefulness of new construction – even when new techniques and materials are employed – and will critically reappraise the history of modernity.
Dr. Barnabas Calder is a historian of architecture and senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism (2016)
Moderation: Maik Novotny / ÖGFA