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This book is the first to quantify energy inputs for a range of buildings worldwide and across the historical record. It consists of 14 accessibly-written case studies and is an important contribution to architectural historical research, written for academics and building professionals as well as for a general audience.
List of contents
Introduction - Form Follows Fuel Methodology 1-2. You may be a Pharaoh: The Great Pyramid in Giza and the Seagram Building in New York 3. A Dwelling in a Low-Energy Society: Blackhouse in Arnol, Scotland 4. A Rammed-Earth Dwelling: Teleuk in Mourla, Cameroon 5. A Mausoleum in an Agrarian Empire: The Burial Mound of the First Chinese Emperor near X¿'¿n 6. Monumental Architecture without Wheels, Iron or Draft Animals: The Great Temple in Tenochtitlan/ Mexico City 7. Leisure from the Emperor: The Baths of Caracalla, Rome 8. Fossil Coal and Capitalist Growth: a Georgian House at 36 Great James Street, London 9. The Transport Revolution: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Mumbai 10. Early mass housing in an industrial city: Tenement at Rostocker Straße 44, Berlin 11. Early mass housing in a colonial context: Jianyeli Lilong ensemble, Shanghai 12. The Modern Factory: Original Assembly Building at the Ford Plant in Highland Park near Detroit 13. Mass housing at its peak: Panel Block at Ulitsa Grimau 14, Moscow 14. The Contemporary Airport: Kuala Lumpur International 15. Conclusion: Architecture for the Post-Oil Era? Annex 1: Basic Energy Figures Annex 2: Human Labour, an Elusive Quantity
About the author
Florian Urban is an architectural historian, professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Studies (HAUS) at the Glasgow School of Art. He was born and raised in Germany, and holds an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA and a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Architecture from MIT. He is the author, among others, of the books
Neo-historical East Berlin - Architecture and Urban Design in the German Democratic Republic 1970-1990 (2009),
Tower and Slab - Histories of Global Mass Housing (2012),
The New Tenement - Architecture in the Inner City since 1970 (2018), and
Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland - Transformation, Symbolic Form and National Identity (2021).
@florianurban.bsky.social
Barnabas Calder is a historian of architecture and head of the History of Architecture Research Cluster at the University of Liverpool. He specializes in the relationship between architecture and energy throughout human history. He also works on British architecture since 1945, and on the intersections between energy systems and human culture. He is the author of
Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism (2016) and
Architecture: From Pre-history to Climate Emergency (2021).
@barnabascalder.bsky.social, Insta: @BarnabasCalder, #ArchitectureAndEnergy
