Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Architecture and
the Environment. Architectural Histories, 6(1): 20,
+LVWRULHV pp. 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.259
FIELD NOTES
encourage us to break through the biases that have fore- their commitment to rendering networks and relation-
grounded questions of aesthetics or technology in archi- ships legible — be they human and non-human, material
tectural history. Engaging these propositions requires and intellectual, tangible and impermanent, scientific and
careful labour and changing the language we use in experienced — the authors echo core intentions of the
researching, writing, and teaching architectural history environmental humanities, of which architectural his-
as a transdiscipline. tory is, after all, a part. At the same time, they call for a
However, as Adams warns, it is also essential for archi- fundamental critique the universal figure ‘Anthropos’ by
tectural historians to critically reflect on the field’s fasci- attending to the long history of structural unevenness
nation with the environment and to remain wary of its and inequality that has underpinned both the idea and
potential pitfalls. Especially in the face of rampant aca- the actual processes of development.
demic capitalism, which has a tangible impact on the built
environment (from campus development to fossil fuel (Re)turn to Theory
investment), the increasing marketization of knowledge One of architecture’s profound capacities is to render the
predisposes architectural thought to a somewhat narrowly management of resources visible — the flow of gold, iron,
historicized understanding of environment. Especially if oil, money and other kinds of capital, goods, or labour.
we want to regard ‘environment’ as a perspective, a grasp This idea, which has shaped critical architectural histori-
of its historicity as a concept and social construct is funda- ography in recent years (Scott, 2016), is strongly informed
mental. According to Barber, such a perspective offers the by the theories of Michel Foucault, above all his concept
opportunity to participate in a wide-ranging environmen- of governmentality (Foucault 2009). It allows us to think
talizsation of humanist and scholarly discourses, instead of of buildings and cities as produced by ‘knowledge frame-
merely adding ‘environment’ to a list of sub-issues for the works and expertise profiles capable of managing popula-
field to engage in. tions by regulating their demographics, health, housing,
[…] employment, social lives and culture’ (Abramson et al.
Environment as Perspective 2012: vii).
To consider environment as a perspective means The fieldnotes by Ayala Levin, Ginger Nolan and Alla
developing a way of seeing — to establish and then to Vronskaya, Torsten Lange, and Maroš Krivý expose archi-
occupy a specific vantage point, from which to look upon tecture’s mediating function in the coproduction of ter-
the world. This suggests that, like feminism, Marxism, or ritory and populations, humans and their environment.
postcolonial studies before it, the environment is at home In her contribution, Levin illuminates Laugier’s Primitive
in no singular discipline, but enables a broader view that Hut simultaneously as sheltering the body from its sur-
can inform multiple subjects. This does not mean that the roundings and as an embodiment of resource extrac-
environment is equally applicable to all topics of study, tion. Nolan and Vronskaya invoke Foucault when they
but it implies that it has the power to cast almost any introduce the notion of ‘environmentality’ as a means
theme in a different light. for understanding the reciprocal relationship between
Aleksandr Bierig, Kenny Cupers, and Jennifer Ferng are the modern invention of ‘humanness’ and the produc-
among the contributors who dare to think which histo- tion of specific milieus tasked with supporting the opti-
ries become possible if we were to truly implement envi- mal development of the human species. Considering an
ronment as a perspective. One of the main propositions environmental perspective, Lange looks at ‘household’ as
these authors share is the need for scrutinizing how the a political technology for the distribution and reproduc-
histories of resource extraction, colonialism, and imperial- tion of resources, bodies, and social constructs, remind-
ism are inextricably linked. Drawing on economic history, ing us of such older but no less relevant theories as those
Bierig questions the idea that the realms of the artificial of Max Weber. Finally, Krivý cautions us about the admin-
and the natural were ever separate, and argues instead istrative and institutional apparatuses that manage the
that architecture has always been part of nature. Cupers environment, and their approaches to urbanism such as
excavates histories that do not take the environment as ‘organicism’ and ‘holism’, whose origins lie in the 19th
given, but that rather recognize its material and concep- century.
tual coproduction. Ferng urges us to consider the wider Far beyond an indebtedness to the debate on
scope of extraction industries, especially in the global governmentality, which has recently been revised by the
south, which date back at least to the establishment of insights of ethnographers and anthropologists (Povinelli
pre-capitalist trade networks. 2006), the positions these authors articulate share a
In unpacking the entangled histories of environment, renewed commitment to a rigorous and historically
capital, and extractive economies, these contributors grounded but speculative theory. While the authors build
assert that in acknowledging the environment as a per- on insights from science and technology studies, environ-
spective, we should pursue ‘intersectional’ approaches mental history, and human geography, they also return to
to architectural historiography, to borrow a term from concepts, themes, and even entire fields of enquiry that
feminist discourse.2 Such histories would draw together have been important, and indeed intrinsic, to architec-
multiple views and vantage points and would conceive tural history. We would even go so far as to say that this
not only of environmental histories of architecture, but particular theoretical approach is something that archi-
would ask what (post)colonial, Marxist, or feminist envi- tectural historians and theorists can contribute to the
ronmental histories of architecture might look like. In larger debate.
Hochhäusl et al: Architecture and the Environment Art. 20, page 3 of 13
society and the neoliberal fixation on securitized urban The two greatest methodological challenges of the
‘environments’, not to mention contemporary military- emerging field of the environmental history of archi-
strategic thinking, than to the more scientific definition tecture are a critical engagement with science and tech-
we take as given. While it may be that the 19th century’s nology and a continued, though revised, approach to
birth of positive sciences coincided with the onset of indus- architecture as media. Broadly speaking, architectural
trialization, giving rise to a new human-environment rela- history has yet to assess the impact of the social construc-
tion, it’s certainly not the first time that this relation has tion of technology on its methodological frameworks.
been transformed, and it would be a fundamental error to Technological innovation, especially around sustainabil-
confuse historical interpretation with origination. Instead, ity, is too often framed as triumphant and unequivocal,
we may find that what the 19th century gave visibility to rather than conditioned, complex, and often fraught with
was a conceptual inflection of environment whose careful unanticipated consequences. Similarly, the shift in media
study may open other ways to interrogate this concept in theory toward a framework of cultural techniques allows
the present. for more focused analysis of architectural concepts and
This is not to deny the methodological and epistemo- ideas as formulating material substrates that elaborate
logical shifts that have already changed the way archi- on historically and culturally contingent distinctions
tectural history is written vis-à-vis environment. Indeed, between interior and exterior, on visual, material, and
these shifts may be registered less in what we study than conceptual terms. Such histories offer a longue-durée
in how we frame our research: the fact that not only are engagement with buildings as physical, conceptual, and
we compelled today to write histories examining the cultural mediators of the environment. The potential
forces that produce architecture, but that we also antici- here is for architectural history to reframe itself as a site
pate how these histories contribute to explorations out- for convening these discussions and exploring their rel-
side our discipline is arguably an outcome of our broader evance to the ideas, concepts, and figures that drive socio-
encounter with environment itself and the challenges it environmental change.
poses to 20th-century epistemological frameworks. Given Environment and sustainability are ciphers for a num-
the transdisciplinarity that environmental questions ber of ideas focused on rethinking relationships between
invite, we may do well to see disciplines as intellectual political, cultural, and biotic systems. The discourse of
points of departure rather than fixed, bounded realms architectural history greatly expands and enriches this
of ‘expert’ knowledge. Precisely for this reason, the limi- discussion by recognizing that all architectural activity
tations of building an intellectual edifice around a term has registered, or directly engaged, environmental issues
understood solely in its relation to modern science may both by professional necessity and as an expression of
become clear. cultural desire. Architectural history helps substantiate
the promise of the emerging framework of the environ-
mental humanities: at stake is not the addition to the
canon of a new set of objects but, rather, the integration
The Environmentalization of Architectural History of knowledge about environmental conditions and their
relationship to social collectives. Environmental histo-
Daniel A. Barber ries of architecture thus address both the material and
University of Pennsylvania, USA the symbolic means through which the field has medi-
barberda@design.upenn.edu ated discussions of cultural change over the past few
centuries.
The promise of reframing architectural historical knowl-
edge in light of environmental pressures solicits an
engagement with a number of epochal shifts. It is self-
evident that architecture will look differently now that Hesitant (Hi)Stories: Whose Environment? Which
there is wide recognition of the impact of fossil fuels — (Architectural) Imaginations?
including those burned to manage the air-conditioned
interiors of modernism — on the planetary climate and Isabelle Doucet
on the future of the species. Narratives and methods Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, SE
of architectural history offer a potent window into the isabelle.doucet@chalmers.se
environment as a collection of historical agencies, espe-
cially insofar as scholarly engagement with methods Radical thinkers of the environment call for challenging
and intentions evident in the built environment offer what Isabelle Stengers refers to as ‘first history’ (2015: 19),
compelling evidence of cultural attempts to understand which is defined as thriving on development and mobili-
and shape collective relationships to earth systems. In zation (of people, nature, and resources) fuelled by eco-
other words, architecture has long been an essential site nomic growth. Stengers asks us to inhabit a new, ‘second
of conceiving of and enacting social relationships to the history’ based on the recognition of the unsustainable
biotic sphere; architectural histories open up compel- and damaging character of the first. In Donna Haraway’s
ling opportunities in tracing these relationships and words, such inhabiting is a matter of ‘staying with the
their effects. trouble’, which involves becoming ‘truly present’ (Hara-
Hochhäusl et al: Architecture and the Environment Art. 20, page 5 of 13
way 2016: 1); asking, to paraphrase Stengers, what these of culture and nature, environment and ecology, with
ongoing processes oblige us to do (Stengers 2015: 19); institutional critique and the sociology of the profes-
and developing other stories than the ones that are pro- sion, to analyze how architecture and the environment
moted through the logic of the ‘first history’. The ques- have been coproduced. This idea of coproduction raises
tion thus becomes how historians of architecture and the questions with regard to architectural history’s periodi-
environment can write such (hi)stories that are embodied, zation, its turning points, broader discourses, specific
responsible, and ‘other’. Can historical accounts be ‘truly cases, etc.
present’ at all? Disciplines such as history, geography, and sociol-
I would argue, albeit tentatively, that architectural ogy have put forth critical historiographic viewpoints
historians adopt a privileged position from which they to reflect upon present-day consequences of devel-
can recall and thus trigger awareness around ‘(first) his- opments since the industrial revolution. They did
tories’ of mobilization, justification, and unsustainable so by linking earth’s history to human life and the
decision-making. Historians of architecture — a projective capitalist mode of production (Chakrabarty 2009); by
discipline and profession — are, moreover, particularly analyzing the effects of fossil capitalism on urbaniza-
well placed to uncover counter-struggles and counter- tion with the shift of power supply from water power
narratives that have attempted to challenge the seem- to steam engine (Malm 2016); or by highlighting
ingly inevitable course of the ‘first history’. They can the dependence of ideologies of growth on the avail-
thus reconnect with (hi)stories and (utopian) imagina- ability of cheap energy, resources, labour, food, etc.
tions that tell alternative stories of living with Gaia; sto- (Moore 2015). These takes on the Anthropocene, or
ries that, because they were considered odd, unrealistic, Capitalocene, ‘understood as a system of power, profit
or inconvenient, went unnoticed, or were silenced. But and re/production in the web of life’ (Moore 2017),
simply writing accounts of such counter-stories is not barely map out the role architecture has played. It is
enough when these remain themselves locked in histori- in the manifold production of the built environment,
ography’s epistemological regimes. Are historians, them- e.g. the naturalization of obsolescence (Abramson
selves products of ‘first history’, not to ask anew: What do 2016), that society’s complex relation to nature
we look at? What do we include as actors in the history of shows itself.
the environment? Clearly, the energy question is a critical issue, although
There is thus a need to question the categories, not the only one, and by analyzing the socio-spatial nature
methods, and concepts through which historians are of the environmental problematic, we would first of all
accustomed to think (such as epochs, canons, oeuvres, historicize shifts in energy base — from wood to coal, to
geographical relevance, and seminal works), and which oil and gas, to nuclear — and their relation to architec-
are possibly still locked in the first history. One way ture, the metropolis, and national territory, in relation to
to do such ‘category work’, as Haraway aptly called the invention of modern building typologies, materials,
it (Gane 2006), is by slowing down, hesitating, and techniques, and technologies. Still, these transformations
becoming sensitive to that which we inhabit. For histo- must be seen in broader terms of political economy and
rians, hesitation is essential for gaining access to those colonialism, population growth and food security, biopol-
‘other’ stories, stories of resistance and of difference. itics and geopolitics, limits and depletion, scarcity and
Architectural historians, by engaging with a projective austerity, etc.
discipline, are well equipped to challenge the domi- Moreover, architectural historians should try to
nance of the ‘first’ environmental history. In doing so, approach unanswered questions by exposing spa-
they contribute to the imagination of other environ- tially fixed regimes of production and consumption,
mental futures. But it requires a laborious, combined, but also by highlighting the effects of pollution and
effort: historiographical category work and the pains- toxicity; or by analyzing the environmental impact of
taking identification and narration of environmental architecture and urbanism, especially with the Great
counter-histories. Acceleration in the West, as in the East, since the 1950s,
as witnessed in architectural manifestations of pet-
rocultures (Szeman et al. 2017). Finally, we might inves-
tigate new geological stratifications on the basis of
Architectural History and the Anthropocene technofossils, in terms of the building material industry
and its reliance on stable, high-energy, at times toxic
Kim Förster materials, such as asbestos, concrete, chemicals, metals, or
Canadian Centre for Architecture, CAN plastics.
kfoerster@cca.qc.ca The task for architectural history then is to
probletamize notions of nature under capital-
In the light of anthropogenic climate change, we might ism at different scales, responding to today’s chal-
want to reconsider how we narrate (and teach) archi- lenges, such as energy transition, sea level rise, and
tectural history as an environmental history. Coming extreme weather events, or even aiming for social
from architectural history, geography, sociology, and and environmental justice, especially in the global
cultural studies, I tend to integrate critical concepts south.
Art. 20, page 6 of 13 Hochhäusl et al: Architecture and the Environment
II. Environment as Perspective The work of early modern historians indicates that
establishing where or when capitalism began is a predict-
ably blurry business. For instance, Sheilagh Oglivie shows
17th-century Bohemian serfs behaving as ‘rational’ eco-
nomic actors (Ogilvie 2001) and Fernand Braudel famously
locates the promethean spark of commerce and exchange
long before the emergence of modern industry (Braudel
1984). In other words, ‘capitalism’ is one thing and fossil
fuels are another. If their logics have proved complemen-
tary (Malm 2016), we should explicate how and why partic-
ular combinations of political economy and motive energy
have affected the creation and destruction of buildings
and infrastructure. While the political and social analysis
of architecture remains vital, the history of energy provides
an additional framework that illuminates why certain pat-
terns governing the built environment were able to expand,
Figure 2: Fields of Tulips, Lisse, The Netherlands. Source: intensify, and proliferate. A long history of the relationship
Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, between spatial structures and changing energy regimes
2014–2016, Deutsches Museum and the Rachel Carson might, in turn, provide examples from the past that point
Center for Environment and Society, Munich. toward new ways of considering the present and future.
belief in the determining influence of the environment on camps in Australia are even better known as fly-in, fly-out
human culture and behaviour. establishments (FIFO) that form temporary housing cen-
In light of this relationship, the rise of modernism at tres for off-site workers, but they often leave behind perma-
the turn of the 20th century might be understood as nent infrastructure that goes unused for several decades.
the reversal of the deterministic relationship between In light of projects that identify global practices of mining
humans and their environment, a reversal in which the in Canada and other countries, we must be more cogni-
environment becomes recognized as being constructed zant that these exemplars encompass a broader chrono-
architecturally and humanity itself is increasingly under- logical and geographical scope that extends across our
stood as a geographical factor. Such an argument might shared international empire (Bélanger 2016; Ponte 2016).
contribute to our understanding of one of the central Thus, the Deutsches Museum’s exhibition intimates that
paradoxes of modernity, namely that the modern violence there are even more anthropocenic milestones that could
towards nature and humanity that pervades much of be integrated into our collective chronicle about the Earth
20th-century history, including the history of architec- and its future fate. These objects of the Anthropocene, in
ture, can be seen as integral to a vitalist worldview that fact, represent essential architectural questions that posi-
understands humanity as an intrinsic part of nature. tion human interventions as an extension of design and
technology. Against ever-expanding global narratives that
touch upon colonial and imperial undertakings, the envi-
ronmental histories from the so-called periphery are no
(More) Global South, Pre-Capitalist Anthropocenic longer limited by access or geography, but only by the self-
Milestones imposed shortcomings of historiographic interpretation.
Jennifer Ferng
The University of Sydney, AU III. (Re)turn to Theory
jennifer.ferng@sydney.edu.au
(management) (Williams 1983: 110–11). Building on the Building the Ineffable: Human-ness and the
work of Max Weber (Weber 1978), we might not only want Reification of Environmentality
to interrogate the politics of managing such households
communally and bureaucratically. But we might also want Ginger Nolan
to reactivate the notion of dwelling as ‘to cherish and University of Southern California, USA
protect, to preserve and care for’ (Heidegger 1997: 96), vgnolan@usc.edu
beyond romantic contempt for worldly things. In addition,
we should critically engage science and technology as well Alla Vronskaya
as political and economic concerns. Illinois Institute of Technology, USA
avronskaya@iit.edu
IV. Architectural Epistemologies of Environment concepts in contemporary STS scholarship, the idea of
envirotechnical landscapes seems critical for architectural
discourse, since it theorizes designers’ long-held fascina-
tion with ‘physical hybrids of ecological and technological
systems’ (Pritchard 2010: 13). Highlighting the fact that
such landscapes are socially constructed and therefore
political, STS scholar Sara Pritchard reminds us that enviro-
technical regimes — bureaucratic and civic forms of power
— administer, alter, and potentially resist the expansion
and shaping of envirotechnical landscapes.
As architectural historians turn to the environment,
this concept of envirotechnical regimes is critical, so as
not to overlook the exclusionary and racialized histories
that underpin some of the writings and projects of 20th-
century architects about discussions of land, landscape,
and particularly the ground. While the idea of construct-
ing homes as core houses, for example, allowed residents
to build homes in phases over time, thus expanding the
scope of their material and economic possibilities, natural
architecture — while based on a similar premise — aimed
at connecting inhabitants through common agricultural
labour to the ground. While the former tried to account
for change and multiplicity in modern life, the latter,
diametrically opposed to it, advanced racialized bio-
logical narratives through the construction of housing
landscapes.
In embracing ‘environment’ as a perspective, there-
fore, more histories that elucidate regimes of power are
needed. Such an endeavour would necessitate taking to
heart the STS mandate of further uncovering how social
Figure 4: ‘The New Surrounding Environment’. Cover of inequalities are historically produced through the con-
L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui/Sovremennaya Arhitektura, struction of buildings, cities, and landscapes. It might
of 1969, when the French journal was published in both imply a political re-interrogation of our discipline’s
French and Russian. tropes and terms, allowing us to address unresolved
themes, such as processes of marginalization and how
they become material through design and construction.
The Environment Is Social, Is Political: About Core But it could also shed light on more hopeful narratives,
Houses and Envirotechnical Regimes such as those envisioned by Frank, that illuminate the
heterogeneous multiplicities and agencies that also
Sophie Hochhäusl characterize modernity.
University of Pennsylvania, USA
hochhaus@design.upenn.edu
In his 1930 essay ‘Was ist Modern?’ the Austrian designer Environment and Modernization under State Socialism
Josef Frank posited that modern life was characterized
by diversity, heterogeneity, and above all change over Andres Kurg
time, and that architecture, too, had to account for these Estonian Academy of Arts, EE
qualities (1930: 133–35). In the 1920s, in a related effort andres.kurg@artun.ee
to plan for change, a group of architects set out to design
modern houses that would grow into their surroundings The recent study of the history and culture of the late
over the years. The proposed architecture aimed at adapt- Soviet period has been characterized by a move away from
ing human habitation to the environment, and designers the previously perceived exceptionality of the communist
referred to their ideas as core houses, growing houses, or bloc towards both analyzing the connections between
even natural architecture. the Cold War adversaries and viewing the Soviet Union as
I came to the study of the environment through these equally ‘complicit’ in the modernization processes of the
architectural projects and, later, through the texts of post-war decades. Environment is one of the terms that
scholars in science and technology studies (STS). While allows us to study the unfolding of these modernization
these two fields of enquiry seem to be distinct, they also processes in a more nuanced way, against the previously
share important concerns and insights that are relevant to dominant approach, while at the same time acting as a
the present discussion on the environment. Among major historical and theoretical concept.
Hochhäusl et al: Architecture and the Environment Art. 20, page 11 of 13
From a historical perspective, we can follow the ways in reaches further than green-washing formerly environmen-
which the professional and public discourse about envi- tally oblivious narratives. Designating the environment as
ronment became ‘visible’ in the Soviet Union from the an object of study does not mean that we must react to
1960s onward. the eco-frenzy of the present. On the contrary, it allows us
In architecture, the parallel French and Russian edition to slow down. If we conceive of architectural history as a
of l’Architecture d’aujourd’hui/Sovremennaya arhitektura history of the built environment (rather than as just a his-
devoted its 1969 issue to the ‘New Environment’. In strik- tory of buildings as objects), then we can more easily see
ing photographs, the issue demonstrated vast changes that we must look deeper, rather than plunging in to fran-
modernization had left on the landscape; it thus intro- tic problem-solving at the risk of causing new problems. ‘Il
duced environment’s relevance for predominantly object- est urgent d’attendre’ — it is urgent to wait — a Red Cross
centred architectural discourse. Official Soviet doctrine, associate with decades of experience in disaster relief told
however, saw these criticisms as the work of pessimistic me in 2005, when teaching our group of potential future
bourgeois theorists who denied socialist control over all water and sanitation engineers.
spheres of life, including the biosphere, which involved Not every historian’s life, however, was timed for wait-
the adaptation of nature to satisfy man’s needs. In other ing. The most tragic fate in this sense afflicted Reyner
fields, discourse about the environment was fuelled Banham, who in 1984 revised and amended his 1969 The
by translations of critical Western authors, such as the Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. After the oil
1974 translation of The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and crisis of the 1970s, he anticipated that his new thirteenth
Technology, by Barry Commoner. This book introduced chapter on passive solar gain would rescue his technologi-
the concept of the ecosphere to the Soviet public and cally driven logic and bring it into a third industrial age. In
analyzed the environment as a system where ‘everything his revised portrayal of the well-tempered environment,
is connected to everything else’, which consequently solar energy would eventually replace fossil fuels, the
spurred active polemics in environmental psychology abundance of which he previously had taken for granted.
(Commoner 1974). According to the Soviet view, the task This attempt to revise his perception of modern architec-
of architecture and design was to provide a ‘harmonious ture as based on the management, and to a lesser degree
objective world’, leading to the formation of the ‘objective the consumption, of energy coincided in the 1970s with
environment in the interests of the creative needs of the the growth in society of an environmental conscience.
human being’ (RGAE f. 9480/9/2026). The official answer Had he lived and waited until the 1990s, he could have
to environmental deterioration thus lay in comprehensive written a post-oil-crisis narrative of solar gain that would
planning, in controlling not only production, but also not only incorporate the window as a solar device but
consumption and human needs. would also involve other procedures and processes in
New research on the theories of the environment in society at large. Despite his hapless timing, Banham nev-
the Soviet context could, however, attempt a leap beyond ertheless provides a role model for any historian making
the analysis of the official rhetoric or of the transfer from an effort to formulate possible solutions because of his
West to East. Taking such an approach would be a way of enthusiasm for new technologies and, even more impor-
accounting for the different global modernization pro- tantly, by his engagement with the everyday world.
cesses in the socialist bloc. These differences were medi- Methodologically, disaster relief and architectural his-
ated, among other things, by the collective ownership of tory share the challenge of operating on varying scales.
land and organization of production, collective and state Large problems are tackled with small tools: pipes, tents,
farming, the particular version of the consumer society — and water tanks that need to be installed; essays and ideas
the ‘underproduction of use-value’, to use the words of with words and images that need to be contextualized.
Ernest Mandel (Mandel 1962) — and the domination of Both fields are confronted with vast questions of long-last-
the military-industrial complex. Critical histories of this ing consequence, while the range of momentary action
kind, which go beyond the exoticization of the socialist is limited. Both must go beyond formal appearances and
environment as either shabby or cool, or beyond declara- address real problems in terms of processes, systems, and
tions of this environment’s abnormality or extraordinari- scenarios. This involves methods other than the mono-
ness, would be highly welcome. graphic study of distinct buildings — methods that can
encompass larger geographic regions and timeframes.
The specificity of our present-day engagement with the
environment seems to lie in the unprecedented tensions
Suspending Urgency of scale. In the midst of resolutions to act, we can remind
scholars of the urgent need to wait.
Sabine von Fischer
ETH Zurich, CH Notes
svfischer@arch-agent.org 1 The etymological and conceptual origins of the term
‘Anthropocene’ remain a matter of dispute. Neverthe-
With green policy, energy research, and sustainable design less, the Dutch atmospheric scientist Paul J. Crutzen,
topping the charts of funded research in architecture and alongside biologist Eugene F. Stoermer, is usually cred-
engineering, the urgency of environmental issues is hardly ited with having formally coined the term, despite him-
in question. For architectural historians, the challenge self pointing to a longer history of ideas that stretches
Art. 20, page 12 of 13 Hochhäusl et al: Architecture and the Environment
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How to cite this article: Hochhäusl, S, Lange, T, Adams, RE, Barber, D, Bierig, A, Cupers, K, Doucet, I, Ferng, J, Fischer, S, von,
Förster, K, Kurg, A, Krivý, M, Levin, A, Nolan, G and Vronskaya, A. 2018. Architecture and the Environment. Architectural Histories,
6(1): 20, pp. 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.259
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