Energy and Environmental Controls in the Historiography of Modern Architecture

Abstract

Heating, ventilating, cooling, and lighting are often overlooked in the historiography of modernism. However, an emerging initiative in architectural history is now addressing energy use in the built environment. Recent studies have illuminated the significance of environmental technologies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Numerous historic structures have now been analyzed in terms of their passive and active systems for creating optimal interior environments, as related to changing ideas on comfort, energy consumption, and environmental sustainability. There has also been a growing interest in studying the embodied energy of historic buildings going back to antiquity. This scholarship assesses how the procurement, transportation, and assembly of materials used energy before the advent of mechanically powered construction equipment. Additionally, new research into the ‘constructional ecology’ of architecture is closely examining energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with the fabrication of conventional modernist materials such as steel and various types of glass, as well as the mechanized production of traditional materials like stone. Collectively, these scholarly efforts are broadening the analytical scope of architectural history by bridging it to disciplines that have traditionally been separate from the primarily art historical study of architecture.