Large-Scale Tobacco Barns in Sumatra

A short portrait of Hans Ulrich Scherer, the pioneer in Swiss terrace house construction, and his important work.

Article on terrace housing in the Architecture Magazine Werk, Bauen und Wohnen

Kleinstadt am Steilhang. Hans Ulrich Scherer und das Terrassenhaus

In the twentieth century, architectural theory has shown difficulties to deal with the sphere of knowledge that is occupied, both in method and content, by so-called architectural anthropology. The emergence of architectural an- thropology itself can be understood as an outcome of a conceptual omission in architectural theory as it evolved since the 1960s—this is the central the- sis of this paper. To support this thesis, I will, in a first step, recall the his- toriographical self-understanding of architectural theory; in a second step, I will sketch the early field of architectural anthropological research in order to name forms of differentiation of this field. Finally, I will explain what can be described as the today’s legacy of architectural anthropology: Beyond its occupation with the material culture of popular architecture, it is a field-re- search practice through which empirical methods have entered into architectural research.

Presence of Architectural History, Wolkenkuckucksheim. International Journal of Architectural Theory, Vol. 28, Issue 44/45, 2024/25

The Archive and the Field. Ethnographic Research in Architectural Theory

How can we conceptualise the street vendor’s cookstove within the energy infrastructure of a city? And in what ways does an understanding of locally lived energy landscapes enhance our tools for energy transition? These are some of the questions addressed in the book Urban Energy Landscapes by Vanesa Castán Broto, where she successfully links the macroscale of energy governance with the microscale of everyday practices in urban settings. The author addresses a wide range of energy-related dimensions, including energy production in power plants (e.g. based on fossil fuel, coal or hydropower) and also energy use in households (e.g. electricity, charcoal, solar energy). After an extremely comprehensive literature review on the interlacement of energy infrastructure, urban governance and material landscape in the first part of the book, Castán Broto takes the reader to four different cities around the globe in the second part. The historical contextualisation and the description of walking experiences ground her concept of collective, heterogeneous urban energy landscapes in concrete places of quotidian realities.

Book Review published in the Journal "Urban Studies" by Vanesa Castán Broto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Book Review “Urban Energy Landscapes” by Vanesa Castán Broto

Traditionally, studies of cities imply a description of its urban development, and an overall denomination of the different areas composing it. The visual landscape of the city usually prevails in these descriptions, and it overshadows other possible ways to envision the city. But other perspectives could have as well highlighted smells or sounds to give account of the city, which is, in our case, Cairo. Here, we will endeavor to sketch a climatic portrait of the Egyptian capital.

ZemZem Tijdschrift, 1/2019 (De Stad), p.24-33

Lucht, licht en de thermometer: een weergave van de klimaten van Cairo

Epidemiologie und Stadtplanung haben eine gemeinsame Geschichte und auch Zukunft, schreibt Sascha Roesler in der "NZZ" und schlägt den Bogen über die städtebaulichen Entwicklungen durch Pest, Cholera, Tuberkulose oder auch Malaria. Die Ausbreitung des Coronavirus nimmt erneut Architektur und Stadtplanung in die Pflicht, sich mit der Hygiene in den Städten Europas auseinanderzusetzen. Die Ansätze von "Smart City" und "Living Lab" führen die Debatte an und werden künftig die Planungsstruktur Europas beeinflussen. Insbesondere das Stadtverständnis als Laboratorium (Living Lab) überzeugt Roesler durch die "Bottom-up-Methode". Er fordert einen urbanen Experimentalismus: "Architektinnen und Stadtplaner sind prädestiniert, diese Beobachtungsfunktion für die Gesellschaft zu übernehmen und aus den neuen Erkenntnissen Schlüsse für die Planung und Gestaltung der Städte zu ziehen."

“Die Stunde der schnellen Architektur hat geschlagen”

In der 1975/76 in mehreren Schweizer Städten gastierenden Wanderausstellung umdenken – umschwenken sowie in der 1987 in Wien gezeigten Ausstellung Sparta/Sybaris wurden Alternativen zum gängigen westlichen Lebensstil präsentiert. Beide Ausstellungen stehen für den Versuch, Möglichkeiten schwach technisierter Lebensweisen in den Industrieländern auszuloten. Aus heutiger Sicht kann die Wiener Ausstellung auch als Verständnishilfe zur in der Schweiz gezeigten Schau verstanden werden.

Artikel in "Kunst + Architektur in der Schweiz", p. 6-13

Nach Sparta – Zwei Ausstellungen als Plädoyers für eine schwach technisierte Lebensweise

Seit rund zwei Jahrzehnten versammelt sich das moderne Wissen zum aussereuropäischen Hausbau in einem Wissensfeld, das sich zunehmend diszipliniert als "Architektur-Anthropologie" zu erkennen gibt. Wie wenig internationale Aufmerksamkeit diese im Entstehen begriffene Disziplin bisher erlangt hat, zeigt sich daran, dass Paul Oliver nach wie vor von "a field without a "discipline" " spricht. Das weltweit praktizierte architektenferne Bauen stellt aus seiner Sicht ein empirisches Feld ohne eine korrespondierende Disziplin dar. Entgegen diesem Befund Olivers soll im Folgenden die Existenz einer solchen Disziplin proklamiert und ihre Kontur umrissen werden. Entlang von sieben Grundsätzen soll die Architektur-Anthropologie skizziert werden, deren epistemologisches Kennzeichen es ist, dass sie Konstruktion zum Mittel und Objekt ihrer Forschung macht. Die Bedeutung einer architekturanthropologischen Forschung für eine zeitgemässe Ausbildung von Architektinnen und Architekten liegt auf der Hand.

Artikel im Jahrbuch D-ARCH 2011, ETH Zürich

Architektur-Anthropologie: eine Annäherung

“Das Potenzial zur klugen Anwendung der Vernunft kann am Beispiel des Umgangs mit einer der ältesten Problemstellungen der Architektur aufgezeigt werden: dem Klima. Das Klima hat im 20. Jahrhundert aufgehört, epistemisch ein reines Objekt der Natur zu sein. Unsere Lebensweise und unsere Klimatisierungsformen erzeugen anthropogene Atmosphären, sowohl im Inneren wie im Äusseren von Gebäuden. In unserer Forschung im Tessin stehen deshalb Mikroklimata als Artefakte der Architektur im theoretischen Zentrum unseres Interesses. Aus dieser Forschung heraus möchte ich nun einige Bemerkungen machen. Die grundlegende Einsicht der Stadtklima- Forschung besteht darin, dass Städte ihrem Klima nicht nur ausgeliefert sind, sondern – gerade umgekehrt – dieses ebenso hervorbringen. Ein solch wechselseitiges, am Anthropozän-Diskurs geschultes Verständnis des Stadtklimas ist heute systematisch in den Architekturunterricht einzubringen. Im didaktischen Mittelpunkt stehen dabei Mikroklimata als entwerferische Artefakte. 'Jedes Wohnhaus, das neu errichtet wird', so Rudolf Geiger in Das Klima der bodennahen Luftschicht, der Gründungsschrift der modernen Stadtklima-Forschung, 'schafft aus dem einheitlichen bodennahen Klima über dem Baugrund eine Fülle von Einzelklimaten.' Diese grundlegende klimatologische Einsicht gilt gleichermassen für das Innere wie das Äussere eines Gebäudes. Indem sich die Komfortforschung im 20. Jahrhundert ganz auf die Stabilisierung und Homogenisierung der thermischen Bedingungen im Inneren der Gebäude versteift hat, wurde versäumt, die so reichhaltige architektonische Erfahrung unterschiedlicher Mikroklimata weiter zu kultivieren.”

Beitrag zu “Architekturpädagogiken: Ein Glossar”, (herausgegeben von Heike Biechteler und Johannes Käferstein), Park Books: Zurich, 2019, p. 82-83.

Mikroklima

Was ist nationale Architektur im internationalen Kontext von Moderne und Globalisierung ? Die Siedlung Habitat Marocain von Jean Hentsch und André Studer in Casablanca (1953 – 56) gibt Anlass, die vorherrschenden Definitionen von Schweizer Architektur in Frage zu stellen.

Artikel in "Werk Bauen Wohnen, Import – Export", 7/8, 2017

Schweizer Architektur? Das Habitat Marocain von Jean Hentsch und André Studer

Die vorliegende Ausgabe von "Kunst + Architektur in der Schweiz" widmet sich dem sogenannten Lebensstil. Wenn nicht alles täuscht, steht diese gleichermassen ästhetische und soziologische Kategorie heute unter dem Gebot der Transformation. Von Lebensstil ist immer dann die Rede, wenn sein Wandel eingefordert wird. Das Heft greift damit ein Thema auf, das sich anfangs der 1970er-Jahre herausgebildet hat: die Reform des Lebensstils im Kontext einer ökologischen Krise der Industriegesellschaften. In den Debatten um Klimawandel und Weltwirtschaftskrise wiederholen sich viele Fragen und Antworten von damals, wenn auch in zugespitzter Form.

Introduction to "Kunst + Architektur in der Schweiz"

Lebensstil-Experimente nach 1970 

Gardens have always been appreciated as places of particular microclimatic qualities. Seen within the broader context of Enlightenment, gardens can be conceived as places of intensified thermal experience and as man-made concentrations of climate. In the first part, remarks on the aesthetics of microclimates, based on the perception of gardens, will be presented. In times when microclimates were not yet measured by scientific means, the thermal differences found in gardens have already been described as part of poetry and painting or in the treatises of gardeners and botanists. In the second part, the scientification of microclimates and its entanglement with concepts of urban green spaces shall be discussed. Over the course of the 20th century, gardens and green spaces became mitigating measures, fighting severe microclimatic conditions of cities, in particular the so-called urban heat islands. In the third part, the central role of movement in recognizing thermal differences in cities will be highlighted. Two pioneering projects, aiming at exploring the environmental “archipelagos” of cities, will be highlighted. The (garden) cities of Bath (UK) and San Francisco (USA) have been the urban territories for multi-sensorial walks of architect Peter Smithson and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, both of which took place in 1966. The movement-oriented and body-centred approaches of Smithson and Halprin are historical forerunners of today’s interest in the exploration and cultivation of the microclimatic dynamics of cities and their social and cultural values. Even more than being geometric and spatial entities, microclimates relate directly to the body with its thermal sensations.

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère 6

On Microclimatic Islands. The Garden as a Place of Intensified Thermal Experience

Architectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China’s northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to the interests of the state and to socio-cultural notions of thermal comfort. Through the classification of Xinjiang as part of China’s northern “Heating Zone,” the keeping warm of individual bodies becomes part of a territorializing strategy. There are, however, clear seasonal differences in how indoor residential spaces are regulated to maintain bodily comfort. In winter, apartment owners and residents enjoy the amenities of the state-financed heating infrastructure. In summer, cooling strategies depend on more neoliberalized, individual, social, and architectural ways to lower indoor temperatures. This paper unfolds the diversity of thermal discourses and practices that characterize Ürümchi citizens’ creation of comfortable residential spaces throughout the seasons. The data outlines that houses as infrastructures are far from being simple containers that keep residents’ bodies warm. Instead, the socio-technical organization of thermal spaces interferes with territorial strategies and ethnic place-making.

Paper published in the journal "Eurasian Geography and Economics“

Warm Bodies in the Chinese Borderlands: Architecture, Thermal Infrastructure, and Territorialization in the Arid Continental Climate of Ürümchi, Xinjiang in "Eurasian Geography and Economics"

En revisitant un sujet classique des atlas géographiques, cette contribution aborde la question du climat sous l’angle de la vie urbaine au Caire. Les enjeux que soulèvent le climat des villes se déclinent à plusieurs échelles qu’il importe d’illustrer au travers d’exemples concrets. Une telle perspective invite à penser des solutions appropriées à la diversité des situations que seule une fine ethnographie permet de restituer.
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Revisiting a classic topic of geographical atlases, this paper deals with the climate from the angle of the urban life in Cairo. The city climate raises issues through different scales, and this needs to be illustrated with concrete examples. Such a perspective invites us to think of appropriate solutions appropriate to the diversity of situations that only a thorough ethnography can accurately reveal.

Article in "Atlas de l’Égypte contemporaine," (sous la direction de Karine Bennafla et Hala Bayoumi), CEDEJ, Editions du CNRS, 2019

Quartiers chauds. Les climats du Caire revisités

Die Krokodil-Studie wird als fundierte Setzung und nicht als wissenschaftliche Publikation (mit Aufsätzen rund um die Studie) präsentiert. Die Studie wird als eine Art Manifest begriffen, das die städtebauliche Agglomerationsdiskussion der letzten Jahre dank klarer Szenarien konkretisiert. Die Studie wendet sich gegen die Romantisierung der "Zwischenstadt" und tritt für eine machbare Art von Verdichtung des Bestehenden und eine Konturierung in leere und volle Räume ein. Die Stärke der Krokodil-Studie ist ihr Hang zur Konkretisierung durch Verbildlichung (so wie die Stärke von "achtung: die Schweiz" die reine Sprachlichkeit war). Der Anspruch der Umsetzbarkeit der Vorschläge ist zentral für die Publikation. Mit der geplanten Publikation soll Unsichtbares sichtbar gemacht und Latentes verbildlicht werden. Angestrebt wird ein kommentiertes Bilderbuch zur zukünftigen (wünschbaren) Urbanität der Glatttal-Stadt.

Glatt! Maniffest für eine Stadt im Werden

Wie wird Covid-19 unsere Städte verändern? Architekten und Städteplanerinnen stehen vor neuen Herausforderungen, sagt Architekturtheoretiker Sascha Roesler: Unsere Städte müssen flexibler werden – und unsere Wohnungen.

Interview of Swiss Television SRF1 on the post-corona city

Leben in der Post-Corona-City: In der Stadt der Zukunft funktioniert alles zu Fuss

In dem 1980 publizierten Aufsatz "Interventions: Professional and User Inputs" verbindet der holländische Architekt und Planungstheoretiker Nicolaas Habraken eine Analyse des ägyptischen Wohnungssektors der 1960er- und 70er-Jahre mit abstrakten machttheoretischen Überlegungen zu den unterschiedlichen Einflusssphären von Bauexperten und Nutzern im Gebäudebereich.

Artikel in Journal for Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture, p. 16-23

Move Furniture around? - Strukturinduzierte Wandlungspotentiale von Wohnbauten (bei Nicolaas Habraken)

Vor dem Hintergrund der kulturtheoretischen Überlegungen Sempers und Riegls möchte ich im nun Folgenden den Blick auf ein durch Stoffwechsel geprägtes Architekturprojekt richten und dabei die Frage der Aktualität dieser damaligen Überlegungen stellen. Beim Projekt handelt es sich um das architektonisch vielleicht bedeutendste ägyptische Wohnbauprojekt des 20. Jahrhunderts – das Umsiedlerdorf New Gourna bei Luxor, entworfen vom ägyptischen Architekten Hassan Fathy (Abb. 4). Der in diesem Projekt sich abzeichnende Stoffwechsel steht, um einen berühmten Ausdruck von Benedict Anderson zu verwenden, im Zeichen einer "Erfindung der Nation";20 die Planung und Errichtung von New Gourna zwischen 1948 und 1954 fällt in die Jahre des modernen ägyptischen Nation-building. Am 23. Juli 1952 wurde König Faruq durch junge Offiziere abgesetzt und am 18. Juni 1953 die Republik ausgerufen. New Gourna entstand in dieser entscheidenden Übergangszeit vom Königreich zum modernen Nationalstaat; es steht für ein neu erlangtes, gleichermaßen kulturelles und politisches Selbstbewußtsein arabischer Gesellschaften.

Prof. Dr. Winfried Nerdinger, Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste, MünchenBayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Jahrbuch 31, 2017, S. 139-160

Architektur im Austausch. Zur Aktualität von Gottfried Sempers Stoffwechsel-Theorie am Beispiel des Umsiedlerdorfes New Gourna von Hassan Fathy

"Das vorliegende Heft, das unseren Vietnamfokus abschließt, konstatiert einen Paradigmenwechsel im Umgang mit den Herausforderungen des Klimas. Statt klimatische Probleme konventionell technisch zu bearbeiten, löst die junge vietnamesische Architektengeneration sie kreativ mit architektonischen Mitteln. Im Gegensatz dazu hat der erste Band ARCH+ 226 Vietnam – Die stille Avantgarde das Augenmerk auf eine sich derzeit vollziehende, einschneidende Wende gerichtet, die das soziale Engagement der Architektur zum Ausgangspunkt einer Neufundierung der Disziplin nimmt. Damit sind die zwei global relevanten Tendenzen benannt, die wir am Beispiel Vietnams behandeln: Neben dem sozialen Bauen eröffnet das klimagerechte Entwerfen der Architektur den Weg zu einer neuen gesellschaftlichen Relevanz.Allerdings bergen beide Tendenzen auch Gefahren: Bei den Ansätzen im ersten Band muss man sich vor einem kulturellen Determinismus hüten. Und ebenso ist bei der Herleitung der Architektur aus den klimatischen Bedingungen im zweiten Band Vorsicht vor einem klimatischen Determinismus geboten. Letzterer neigt dazu, alle kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse bis hin zu sogenannten "Volkscharakteren" auf das Klima zurückzuführen. Doch neben weiteren Faktoren wie sozialen Einflüssen dürfen wir auch den aktiven Einfluss des Menschen auf seine Umwelt nicht außer Acht lassen. Spätestens mit den anthropogenen Veränderungen des Klimas stellt dieses keinen „quasi zeitlosen, vereinheitlichenden Rahmen historischer Entwicklungen" mehr dar, sondern ist "zu einer dynamischen Größe geworden, die weder über einen stabilen Rhythmus noch über ein gesellschaftlich klar eingegrenztes Wirkungsfeld verfügt", wie Sascha Roesler im einleitenden Essay konstatiert. Der menschengemachte Klimawandel hält sich nicht an hergebrachte territoriale Grenzen. Auch die Einteilung in ein "natürliches" Außenklima und ein "künstliches" Binnenklima sei, so Roesler weiter, mit der Schaffung des anthropogenen "Stadtklimas" obsolet: „Das epistemisch ausschlaggebende Untersuchungsobjekt ist nicht mehr das isolierte Einzelgebäude, sondern das Quartier oder gar die Stadt […]. Die Stadt löst das Gebäude als jene Innenraum konstituierende Sphäre ab, die thermisch und hinsichtlich des Komforts durch Architekten konzipiert werden muss." Die Erkenntnis, dass wir nicht mehr nur Häuser, sondern den Stadtinnenraum bewohnen, führt zu einem echten Paradigmenwechsel. Beispiele dafür sind das House for Trees von Vo Trong Nghia Architects in ARCH+ 226 oder das Saigon House von a21studio in dieser Ausgabe. Deren Ansätze zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie keinen kontinuierlichen, abgeschlossenen Innenraum mehr besitzen, sondern die Funktionen in separaten Volumen untergebracht sind. Das Aufbrechen der Form aktiviert die Zwischenräume und führt zu komplexeren Beziehungen zwischen den individuellen und gemeinschaftlichen, den privaten und öffentlichen Bereichen, zwischen innen und außen, künstlich und natürlich. Die Aufhebung dieser Gegensätze erlaubt es, die Architektur "als Teil einer politischen Ökologie der Stadt neu zu denken", wie Roesler in Anlehnung an Bruno Latour argumentiert. Gleichzeitig können wir dadurch der Gefahr entgegenwirken, dass die Rückkehr des Klimas in die Architekturdebatte in eine regressive Bewegung mündet, die die moderne Lebenswirklichkeit mit ihren vielfältigen Ansprüchen negiert." Anh-Linh Ngo für arch+.

Die Wiederkehr des Klimas. Urbane Kulturen der Belüftung in Südostasien

Wie können urbane Gesellschaften die Energieversorgung von Gebäuden als gemeinschaftliche und nicht bloss private Aufgabe angehen? Diskussionen über die thermische Regulierung von Einzelgebäuden zielen an dieser drängenden Problemstellung von heute vorbei. Im folgenden Beitrag wird dafür plädiert, den Fokus der thermischen Bestimmungen weg von abgeschotteten Einzelgebäuden hin zu interdependenten Mikroklimata neu auszurichten.

Jenseits von innen und aussen. Die Stadt als thermischer Innenraum der Gesellschaft 

Hassan Fathys Diktum, Architektur beschäftige sich nicht mit Gebäuden, sondern mit Gebäuden und Menschen – "Architecture deals with human beings and buildings, not just buildings" – bringt emblematisch ein Architekturverständnis auf den Punkt, das bereits mit Gottfried Sempers Projekt einer "vergleichenden Baulehre", dem lange angekündigten aber unrealisierten dritten Band des Stils, seine konzeptionellen Anfänge genommen hatte. Die Korrelierung von Gebäuden mit Menschen kann ganz allgemein als anthropologischer Begründungsversuch von Architektur begriffen werden, der von einem inhärenten, von physikalischen Gegebenheiten ausgehenden Begründungsansatz unterschieden werden muss. Ein anthropologisches Verständnis von Architektur zieht wechselweise Bauen und Menschsein zu ihrer Bestimmung heran. Dieses anthropologische Verständnis wird von einer Intuition getragen, die im Bauen ein generelles Vermögen des Menschen erkennt, das dem Wissen architektonisch-baulicher Experten (Architekten, Ingenieure) epistemisch vorausgeht. "Jeder Mensch" – und nicht etwa "der Architekt" – wäre demnach das zentrale handelnde Subjekt der Architektur und damit im Mittelpunkt einer konstruktiven Forschung dieser Disziplin.

Book “Weltkonstruktion“, in "arch+", 221, 2015, p. 14-15

Anthropologische Theorie der Konstruktion

Twenty-two degrees Celsius is a pleasant indoor temperature, and in our era of urbanisation it’s become a global standard. But it means using up an absurd amount of energy. When the climate is hot and humid, we cool our buildings massively; and in the colder seasons, we turn up the heating. The Zurich-based architect Sascha Roesler shakes his head when he thinks about it. “We have to ask radical, critical questions about this specific architectural legacy of the 20th century – namely the idea that the indoor climate of a building has to be thermally separate from the outdoor climate”. Roesler is currently an SNSF Professor of architecture and urbanism at the School of Architecture of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Mendrisio. His aim is to find construction methods that exist in a state of exchange with the environment. Because “in previous centuries, these transitions were fluid”.

Article in "Horizons", the Magazine of the Swiss National Science Foundation

How architecture changes indoor temperatures

Article in the German architectural magazine Bauwelt about the driving forces behind the early development of the terrace house in Switzerland.

Article in the Architecture Magazine Bauwelt

Am Scheideweg von High und Low Architecture

Although the significance of vernacular cooling strategies is well accepted among scholars of architecture (Taut 1937, Fitch / Branch 1960, Fathy 1986), the differences between passively cooling a small village house, and cooling a large-scale city building have to be considered carefully. But what about the large-scale high-rise informal buildings in a big city like Cairo, Egypt (Fig. 1)? Have these buildings something to teach us in terms of cooling large-scale mass housing developments (Fig. 2)? In this article I’m going to argue that the very young phenomena of informal building is the missing link between vernacular and academic construction. The gap between tradition and modernity can be bridged by investigating informal cooling strategies. During fieldwork conducted in an informal quarter in Cairo (Egypt, 2010) I had the opportunity to live with and to investigate such informal cooling strategies.

Article in "Future Cities Laboratory Magazine," N° 1, September 2013, 52-57

On the Use of Slots and Shafts. Informal Cooling Strategies as Indicators for New Cooling Concepts – Microclimate Ethnography in the Ard el Lewa Informal Quarter of Cairo (Egypt) 

In the discipline of architecture to date, hardly any approaches exist to integrate into architectural education knowledge of construction as it is found in vernacular and informal building. The following remarks are intended as a plea for the establishment of a new academic discipline that comprehensively addresses such vernacular building traditions, commonly referred to as “architecture without architects” (Rudofsky 1964). The discipline will be entitled “architectural anthropology”; subject matter of this discipline would primarily consist of domestic, non-European building phenomena. Architectural anthropology comprises an interdisciplinary field of knowledge, in which architects – as well as anthropologists – play a crucial role. The following considerations deal only with the (possible) contribution of architects to this new discipline.

Article in Nuts & Bolts of Construction History. Culture, Technology and Society, Vol. 1, ed. by Robert Carvais et. al., Editions A&J Picard, 2012, p. 29-35.

Architectural Anthropology: a Knowledge-Based Approach

The practice of regulation of indoor climates has spread globally with the rise of modern architecture and has cemented the idea of an air-conditioned indoors as opposed to a non-controllable outdoors. The ethnographic data discussed here from the metropolis of Chongqing (southwest China) presents a more nuanced picture and encourages scrutiny of the notion of “hyper-conditioned environments”. Local thermal practices are not clear-cut along the lines of indoors and outdoors; rather, everyday life takes place in a range of adjoined microclimates. Building upon the centrality of the body for perceiving thermal differences, this paper analyses the interaction of climate, landscape and architecture in an era where hyper-conditioned environments are taken for granted. The paper develops an argument for more place-based studies on how conditioning is conceived in specific contexts. In a highly urbanized setting such as Chongqing, it is not only local climatic characteristics (e.g. little wind or high humidity) that affect architecture. Further, the national political economy that promulgates poorly insulated houses or residential customs such as ventilation interfere in the warming or cooling of bodies. This paper aims to sensitize architects to conceptualizing buildings not as detached and controllable entities, but as part of urban climatic landscapes.

Keeping Warm in Subtropical Winter. When Everyday Life Disrupts the Concept of Hyper-Conditioned Environments in Chongqing (Southwest China) 

Während sich Epidemien in einer verslumten Stadt insbesondere auf “eine Unterversorgung mit Hygienetechnologie” zurückführen lassen, gehen pandemische Gefährdungen heutiger Städte mehr und mehr aus "einer industriellen Überproduktion" hervor, wie Ulrich Beck bereits 1986 in seinem Buch “Risikogesellschaft” festgestellt hat. Gefährdungen wie das Coronavirus zeichnen sich “durch die Globalität […] und ihre modernen Ursachen” aus; sie machen aus Städten ökologische Labors, wo im Raum der Stadt und unter Einbezug der Zivilgesellschaft proxemische Lösungen für die “Folgeprobleme der technisch-ökonomischen Entwicklung” gefunden werden müssen.

Epidemiologie, urbane Proxemik und Städtebau

Das 1924 vollendete erste Gebäude des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung wurde im Zweiten Weltkrieg zerstört. Mittels einer imaginären Rekonstruktion des Gebäudes lassen sich die widersprüchlichen ideologischen Anleihen freilegen, die diesen wichtigen Bau prägten.

Festung der Wissenschaft. Das erste Gebäude des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung

In the course of the 20th century, a number of modern architects developed a form of empirical research that qualified as quasi-ethnographic by mid-century, and has since, due to progressively greater scientific rigor, become genuinely ethnographic. In this essay, Sascha Roesler distinguishes between three forms of architectural-ethnographic representation. He argues that we need to acknowledge the epistemological specificities of this research. In contrast to the widespread notion that ethnographic research in architecture is tantamount to conducting building surveys, Roesler proposes a representational model that sees buildings as cultural “systems of inscription.” He discusses this model with reference to the work of Dorothy Pelzer, Trevor Marchand, and Hassan Fathy.

Article for Candide – Journal for Architectural Knowledge, Vol. 8

Visualization, Embodiment, Translation. Remarks on Ethnographic Representations in Architecture

Microclimates, as natural or technical phenomena, are thermal zones with site-specific physical and thermodynamic characteristics; they are shaped by air temperature, moisture, rain, wind and other environmental factors. This publication emphasizes the man-made character of urban microclimates, and as such, expands existing approaches from applied climatology and building science. As artifacts, microclimates are part of local material cultures with various ecological, social and political implications. Following a theoretical approach which mediates between architecture and the social sciences, this publication explores how thermal diversity — both outdoors and indoors — is a product of human interaction with the built environment of cities. The case studies and interviews critically engage with urban microclimates in Burkina Faso, France, Italy, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan and the United States. Far from being arbitrary, the case studies highlight the critical role of architects, landscape architects and urban planners in the design and construction of urban microclimates.

Microclimates and the City. Towards an Architectural Theory of Thermal Diversity / Sascha Roesler and Madlen Kobi

Between Laboratory and Sea Ranch. Architecture and the Notion of Microclimate / Lisa Heschong, in Conversation with Sascha Roesler

Citizens and Climate. Microclimatic Patterns in Medieval Cities (Northern Italy) / Roberto Leggero

Indoor Urbanism. Air-Conditioned Microclimates in Metro Manila (The Philippines) / Marlyne Sahakian

Public Microclimates. Thermal Outdoor Expectations in Post-Earthquake Christchurch (New Zealand) / Silvia Tavares

Thermal Sensations. The Case of the Jade Eco Park in Taichung (Taiwan) / Philippe Rahm, in Conversation with Sascha Roesler

Thermal Layers. The Case of the Lycée Schorge in Koudougou (Burkina Faso) / Francis Kéré, in Conversation with Madlen Kobi

Building a Brazilian Climate. The Case of the House of Brazil in Paris (France) / Ignacio Requena-Ruiz

Heating and Cooling the Desert. The Case of the Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs (USA) / Matthias Brunner

The Urban Microclimate as Artifact. Towards an Architectural Theory of Thermal Diversity

Die Neugierde, sich selbst durch die Sicht eines Anderen schärfer in den Blick zu kriegen, hat sich auf die Konzeption der vorliegenden Publikation deutlich ausgewirkt. Ich wollte das poolsche Werk unter dem Aspekt der "Identität und Differenz" der Gruppe thematisieren. Während eine herkömmliche Architekturmonografie das eigene Werk im Licht einer als verbürgt geltenden Autorschaft präsentiert, versuchte ich in dieser Publikation eher, Erkenntniszugänge zum Schaffen und zum mehrdeutigen Status der Gruppe zu vermitteln.

Pool Werkjournal 1998-2010

Derzeitige Diskussionen rund um Smart City und Living Lab deuten an, dass sich die Planungskultur Europas infolge des Coronavirus grundlegend verändern wird.

Article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung NZZ, Feuilleton

Epidemiologie und Stadtplanung haben eine gemeinsame Geschichte und auch Zukunft

While 20th century architecture learned to control the climate of a building, the architecture of the 21st century needs to learn to cope with the climate of cities. Problems such as urban heat and air pollution need to be included in planning and design. Based on empirical realities in Cairo, Chongqing, Geneva and Santiago de Chile, the book underlines that the materiality and social practices attached to room heating, compound greening, street alignment or climate policies together form the tissue for contemporary urban climates. It interweaves socio-cultural with meteorological data and pioneers the new concept of "thermal governance" by linking architectural and technological as well as legal and economic dimensions of climate control in urban environments.

Main outcome of a six-year research project on "architecture and urban climates," funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Based on ethnographic inquiries and visual mappings.

Geneva (Switzerland):
The Architecturalization of Water Ecologies
On the Integration of Energy Transition and Climate Adaptation
Lorenzo Stieger


Santiago de Chile:
The Standardization of Indoor–Outdoor Transitions
On the Dynamics between Public Spaces and Climate Control
Lionel Epiney


Chongqing (People’s Republic of China):
The Electrification of the Urban Fabric
On Governing the Built Environment’s Seasonality
Madlen Kobi


Cairo (Egypt):
The Domestication of Urban Heat
On the Everyday Production of Microclimates
Dalila Ghodbane

Architecture and Thermal Governance
Six Components
Sascha Roesler, Madlen Kobi, Lorenzo Stieger


Urban Climate Protocols
Visualizing Socio-climatic Differences
Sascha Roesler, Madlen Kobi, Lorenzo Stieger,
Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan, Adrian Ehrat ;
with the support of Lionel Epiney and Dalila Ghodbane

Volume 2 in the series Klima Polis, Birkhäuser

Coping with Urban Climates - Comparative Perspectives on Architecture and Thermal Governance

Es handelt sich um eine evolutionäre Gebäudemonografie einer kleinen Serie von drei Siedlungen im marokkanischen Casablanca der beiden jungen Schweizer Architekten Jean Hentsch und André Studer gebaut gegen Ende der französischen Kolonialzeit 1954 bis 1956. Sie bauten ein strukturalistisches Meisterwerk, das versuchte, Ansätze der regionalen Vernacular Architecture aufzunehmen und künftige Transformationen in der rigiden Struktur zu ermöglichen. Anhand der sehr historisch anmutenden Reisefotos der Architekten im Land zu jener Zeit lässt sich dieser Ansatz nachverfolgen. Anschließend werden die tatsächlichen Transformationen der nächsten 60 Jahre gezeigt und damit das Leben dieser Bauwerke und offenbaren ein typisches Dilemma wohlmeinender Westler, deren kulturelle Vorurteile mit den echten Lebensgewohnheiten der Bewohner kollidieren. So werden zum Beispiel horizontale Fensterbänder, die gestalterisch auf der Höhe der westlichen Zeit daher kommen, entlarvt, indem die Bewohner sie später zu kleinen Löcher zumauern, um der Hitze und der Helligkeit zu entkommen. Gedruckt in dünnem hellgrauen Papier erinnert dieser erste Band einer künftigen Reihe "Resettlement Archives" im Textteil an Zeitungen und im Bildteil wird festeres Papier verwendet. Der offene Buchrücken verstärkt das unprätentiöse Erscheinungsbild. Erschienen ist dieses feine Werk bei Park Books als ein Projekt des ETH Zürich Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore von Sascha Roesler mit 200 Seiten.

Preisverleihung DAM Architectural Book Award 2016, Frankfurt am Main.

DAM Architectural Book Award 2016: Habitat Marocain Documents - Dynamics Between Formal and Informal Housing

Architecture, the process of designing, constructing, and inhabiting buildings and public spaces, relies on infrastructure. And infrastructure, the material components and social connections that provide foundational services for citizens, depends on architecture. Conceptualizing architecture without thinking about infrastructure is, this themed issue argues, out of the question.

Edited volume of the online journal Roadsides

Roadsides 4: Architecture and/as Infrastructure

Klimaangepasstes Bauen hört nicht an der Fassade auf. Viele Forschungs- und Pilotprojekte ergründen die Wechselwirkungen von Mensch, Haus und Umgebung. | La construction adaptée aux changements climatiques ne s’arrête pas à la façade. De nombreux projets pilotes et de recherche explorent les interactions de l’homme, de la maison et de l’environnement.

Themenheft von Hochparterre, In Kreisen bauen | La construction circulaire

Rundumwelt | Environnement et circularité

Accompanied by a green tea that was given to me by a Chinese friend during my last visit to Chongqing in December 2017, I am sitting here at my desk in Bern (Switzerland) and longing to walk again through Huangjueping neighbourhood. During my ethnographic research, I developed a tradition of going on both short and longer walks through urban neighbourhoods, letting my curiosity guide me, often without a clear destination in mind. I enjoy getting inspired by particular architecture, the way balconies are used, street life, public places or unexpected views around the corner of the next house. And whenever such an opportunity arises, I stop for a little chat with an ice cream vendor, a school kid playing or the noodle shop waitress. These talks enrich my impressions of a place and create specific bonds with it. I hope to be able once again to walk in Huangjueping in spring 2021 when, with luck, COVID-19 travel restrictions should be over. Then I can continue my fieldwork, enriching my mental map with new lived experiences.

Contribution to the Project "Walks to Remember During a Pandemic. 'With Memory I was There'" by Louise Ann Wilson

Walks in Huangjueping (Chongqing, China). Encounters with Warming Objects and Ventilation Heritage

Sascha Roesler hinterfragt unser heutiges Komfortparadigma und sieht die Stadt als neuen thermischen Innenraum der Gesellschaft.

Interview von Axel Simon in einer Spezialausgabe der Zeitschrift Hochparterre, Solaris #02

Wärme und Strom sind architektonische Fragestellungen

Le décalage entre, d’une part, la connotation nostalgique avec laquelle est envisagée la relation architecture/climat dans le discours architectural et, d’autre part, l’expérience contemporaine des variations climatiques dans la majeure partie des logements urbains, comme au Caire, constitue la problématique centrale de cet article.
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The Air and the Manner. Thermal Practices and Know-how in Domestic Spaces in Cairo. / The gap between, on the one hand, the nostalgic connotation with which the relationship between architecture and climate is considered in architectural discourse and, on the other hand, the contemporary experience of climatic variations in most urban housing, such as in Cairo, constitutes the central issue of this article.

Article for Urbanités #12 / La ville (s)low tech, 2019

L’air et la manière. Pratiques et savoir-faire thermiques dans les espaces domestiques du Caire 

The city of Hyderabad in Pakistan was widely known as manghan jo shaharu, the city of the wind catchers. In the second half of the 20th century, these wind catchers became part of a modern iconography of the winds. Since images have been published in Bernard Rudofsky’s influential book Architecture without Architects in 1964, the roofscape with its scores of wind catchers has repeatedly appeared in publications on architecture and the ecology movement. The recurring reference to the roofscape shown by Rudofsky has imbued these images with a twofold reference character which follows the interpretation of Hyderabad that was created by the New York MoMA exhibit. Rudofsky’s exhibit and exhibition catalog have constituted the framework for an interpretation of the circulating images of Hyderabad’s roofscape ever since. By tracing the photographic tradition of Hyderabad’s wind catchers, this article reveals the historical character of this motif and thus an allegorical concept of the relationship between architecture and environment which, given today’s focus on sustainability, is becoming increasingly important. "Nature," says Walter Benjamin, "has always been allegorical," thus anticipating an insight of contemporary science and technology studies (STS). A rereading of the interpretational approaches to the wind catchers reveals the questionable character of the one-sided transfer of modern energy and technology concepts onto architectural forms that originated in different historical contexts. An allegorical interpretation of the wind catchers may help to recognize vernacular forms of knowledge as mediated and as circulating on a global scale. Illustrations of wind catchers in modern architectural publications tell us as much about the energy societies in Europe and the U.S. as about the vernacular thermal forms of knowledge in Pakistan. Beyond the cultural, the sculptural, and the technological interpretation of the wind catchers, the motif directs our eye to a general solution for the entire city, which is gaining importance in today’s reflections on urban forms of energy supply. The task of cooling is transferred from the building scale to the urban scale and from high to everyday culture.

Article in "Quaderni dell’Accademia di architettura," Università della Svizzera italiana, (edited by Sonja Hildebrandt et al.), 2018, p. 126-139

architettura e saperi - architecture and knowledge

Allegory of the Sustainable City. The Wind Catchers of Hyderabad (Pakistan) and Their Spread in the Modern Architectural Discourse 

This publication presents a kind of dossier on Habitat Marocain (a collection of various materials). Given the significance of this key project in culture-specific modern architecture, a publication devoted to its design has long been a desideratum. The approach taken here, moreover, reflects the fact that in order to fully appreciate the project, we need to look at its evolution and what has happened since it was erected. Beyond the original architectural plans, therefore, the dossier also includes the preliminary stages in the project’s design and the architectural transformations that have been undertaken since Habitat Marocain was built. The basic assumption is that Habitat Marocain can only be properly understood in terms of the dynamics between formal and informal housing. The book combines original documents from the extensive estate of André Studer (gta Archive, ETH Zurich) and material owned by his widow, Theres Studer, with more recent material including two interviews and photographs of the transformed housing complex.

Habitat Marocain Documents

When it comes to cooling and heating buildings, many parts of the world are still imitating 20th century practices. As a discipline, architecture continues to be bound to a paradigm of comfort whose emergence was closely connected with the use of oil. The familiar result − while providing homogeneously air-conditioned rooms and improved technical understanding of climate control – has all too often, however, disregarded sustainable solutions. In Southeast Asia, modernisation of the built environment still largely entails a proliferation of air-conditioning units, a preference that simply rejects natural ventilation as an outdated practice. Against that background, this special issue of FCL Magazine aims to underscore the relevance of natural ventilation within the contemporary urban Asian landscape. Given the current requirements for energy-saving methodologies, a sustainable future will rely on more than mechanical cooling strategies alone. Urgently needed are urban-relevant ventilation concepts that address the interrelationships among climate, territory, and architecture, concepts that give far greater attention to natural ventilation, which, even as an age-old cultural practice, still has relevance to dense urban areas today. The specific focus of the research we present here then, is on natural ventilation in urban environments. We pose new questions − regarding air pollution, for example − and give insights into the ‘fine art’ of natural ventilation, such as by drying tobacco leaves. The findings are based on both fieldwork and comparative study: We assess the current state of natural ventilation in the cities of Medan (Indonesia) and Singapore by looking at the urban mass housing system, typologies, housing policies, and their implications for the venting systems. In doing so, we identify the critical obstacles and, conversely, the potential inherent in using natural ventilation in an urban context. Our ultimate goal is to pioneer a new climatisation culture in the Southeast Asian region. This special magazine issue is the product of a collaboration among three architects: Marcel Jäggi, Sascha Roesler, Ani Vihervaara; a landscape architect, Karoline Kostka; and a visual artist, Katja Jug. Its publication marks the completion of the research module ‘Territorial Organisation’ that was conducted from 2010 to 2015 at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore.

FCL magazine (special issue) “Natural Ventilation, Revisited. Pioneering a New Climatisation Culture"

The materiality of and daily life in urban high-rise buildings has barely been researched, especially when compared to the rich anthropological and architectural studies that exist on rural architecture. This article engages with indoor climate control in an urbanizing environment. It considers urban architecture as a social field characterized by the interaction of diverse actors such as architects, policymakers, investors and residents. Based on ethnographic data from subtropical Chongqing (China) in winter, the broader aim is to outline an urban architectural anthropology that approaches the house from a holistic perspective with regard to its materiality, namely by considering both its structure and interior architecture, all embedded in the larger political and economic context. Apropos thermal comfort, architects often focus on the qualities of the material structure of a building for indoor climate control, while social science approaches tend solely to consider the objects and practices inside those structures. In following a practice-arrangement nexus approach as put forward by Schatzki (2010), I propose to think the two levels as interrelated. Ethnography-based research thus contributes significantly to grasping how people react to buildings and make themselves comfortable in social, socio-material and thermal terms.

Winter bedroom and workplace of Wang Chongshi

Installation of an electronic underfloor heating system

Contours of an Urban Architecture Anthropology

Since the emersion of Covid-19 in Europe, mainly virologist and economist are the scientific providers of keywords and the main advisors of goverments and the public. Historically however modern architecture and urban planning decisively contributed to the development of a hygienic self-image in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Video contribution for the newsletter of the Università della Svizzera italiana

Covid-19 and Urban Planning

Any research on microclimates must start by questioning the nonmateriality of microclimates by identifying their material aspects, but without once again succumbing to the primacy of the visual. In architecture, materiality is typically equated with visuality; this is a misleading equation, since microclimates involve other human senses.

Architectural Theory Review 21(1), 2017, p.73-88

The Urban Microclimate as Artefact. Reassessing Climate and Culture Studies in Architecture and Anthropology

The ‘little sun’ [小太阳] is a small electronic infrared heater used to warm one’s body. Since the implementation of the ‘Great Heating Divide’ in the 1950s, apartments in cities in the southern subtropical part of China are built without connection to a central or district heating grid. The materiality of architecture reinforces the cold, as insulation is deficient, windows are often only single glazed and there are many air-leak points in the façade. How then, do residents keep themselves warm during the cooler months? And how are everyday objects embedded in urban energy landscapes?.

Ode to the "little sun". Everyday thermal practice and energy infrastructure in Chongqing (China)

In order to build sustainably an understanding of the place is needed – place in a sense that goes far beyond the immediate context and that takes account of value chains and the origins of materials. Since the 1990s it has been possible, by using the energy balance, to estimate quite precisely the amount of grey energy that goes into producing a building. )is opens up possibilities for ecologically responsible building – also in the city, using “vernacular” materials. For their wider use and application at a large scale it is most important that standards and guarantees, which have a major leverage effect, should be adapted accordingly. If old building techniques are used widely then “modern” construction materials such as steel and concrete can be employed where this makes sense: for foundations, for instance, or in bridges. Architects also have a role to play in this rethinking process, as do the ways in which their work is honoured such as competitions and exhibitions, which, not least, can serve the development of a new aesthetic.

Welt als Kontext

In the following article, architectural theorist Sascha Roesler examines his recent research on practices of climate control in cities in light of his earlier studies on the concept of habitat of the 1950s. The central legacy of the discourse of habitat consists in the culturally comparative approaches to environmental and climatic themes in architecture, which need however to be updated in times of the Anthropocene.

Article for Bauhaus, N° 12: Habitat, p. 43-49.

Climate Control as a Cultural Praxis. Notes on the Climatic Legacy of the Concept of Habitat

Mit "Tierarchitektur“ konstituierte sich seit den frühen 1960er Jahren ein Begriff, der das Territorien begründende Verhalten von Tieren in Analogie zur menschlichen Architektur als ästhetisch-bauliche Praxis versteht. Die Anfänge einer dezidiert ästhetischen Deutung des territorialen Verhaltens von Tieren als Tierarchitektur finden sich da, wo Biologen aus modernekritischen Impulsen heraus in einen Dialog mit Architekten und Ingenieuren treten. Die Architektur des Menschen bildet dabei den Echoraum, in dem die ethologischen Erkenntnisse nachhallen und durch den die Tierbauten erst eine ästhetisch-architektonische Dimension erlangen. Der ästhetisierende Blick auf Tierbauten verdankt sich letztlich reformerischen Impulsen, die die moderne, von Architekten gestaltete Lebenswelt betreffen.

Artikel in der Zeitschrift "Tierstudien", p. 93-104

Bauen ohne Hand und Hirn. Anmerkungen zum Begriff der Tierarchitektur

To turn the influencing factor of climate into a design factor in the first place, one must accept the idea that over the millennia, people have observed the natural environment in which they built. Many everyday domestic building methods around the world can be regarded as the evolutionary result of observing the climate. There is a provable, albeit rarely explicit correlation between climate zones and construction principles. People integrated themselves and their building methods into the local climatic conditions; but they also tried to manipulate them to their advantage using appropriate structural measures. That is the ambivalent aspect of adaptation to and adaptation of natural conditions through construction and buildings.

Book Contribution to "Climate as a Design Factor. Architecture and Energy," (ed. by Christian Hönger et al.), Luzern, 2013, p. 18-21 

Climate and Culture

This is a Call for Papers for the forthcoming issue of Roadsides 004: Architecture as/and Infrastructure that brings together innovative work from anthropologists, architects, urban planners, engineers, geographers, and environmental scientists to expand understandings of architecture and infrastructure as dynamically evolving social relations between humans, design, materials, technologies, capital, the environment, and the state.

Co-edited article with Nadine Plachta for the online platform Allegra

Architecture and/as Infrastructure

With his “Weltkonstruktion” publication, Sascha Roesler offers the first intellectual history on ethnographic research conducted by modern architects. The publication goal was to document the relevance of this history for today’s constructive thinking in architecture. The modern architects’ empirical exploration of domestic buildings outside Europe uncovered the narrowings of modern concepts of construction, and made their epistemic limitations visible. In the ethnographic discourses about popular building outside Europe, parameters related to building that the architecture discipline – owing to time constrictions, or theoretical and ideological reasons – had neglected, may reconsidered again. In lieu of construction’s usual orientation towards load-bearing structures, novel conceptual fields of reference appear, highlighted as thermodynamic or symbolically structured materiality.

“Roesler has struck an epistemological goldmine.” (Prof. Dr. Stephan Trüby, TU Munich)

“It is a unique book, as it is written by someone who knows intimately about architecture and building technology and writes from the viewpoint of architectural construction, yet it is a history of ethnography.” (Dr. Michael Guggenheim, University of London)

Book publication "Weltkonstruktion. Der aussereuropäische Hausbau und die moderne Architektur – ein Wissensinventar," Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag

A Global History of Architectural Ethnography

Telelavoro e timori per la salute potrebbero trasformare il nostro rapporto con le grandi città, il modo in cui le viviamo e ci viviamo. O non ci viviamo più. Non è ancora facile comprendere se a livello globale stiamo per assistere a un esodo dai centri urbani verso la più tranquilla campagna; i segnali in questo senso sono discordanti, e delineare una tendenza chiara non sembra ancora possibile. Di sicuro il maggior ricorso al telelavoro modificherà la vita delle città andando a influire anche sulle attività economiche. Tempo di dire addio a palazzoni, strade trafficate e locali affollati? Chi ci guadagnerebbe e chi ci perderebbe? È ciò che cercheremo di capire in questa prima puntata della nuova stagione. Con Andrea Rigazzi e Federico Maffezzoli.

Servizio radiofonico per la Radio Rete Tre del Ticino

Scappo dalla Città. Se il virus spinge la gente in periferia

The publication rethinks climate control – a key concern of the discipline of architecture – through the lens of city climate phenomena over the course of the 20th century. Based on a history of climate control on urban scales, it promotes the integration of indoors and outdoors in order to reduce environmental and thermal loads in cities. Just as heating and cooling practices inside the buildings are affecting the (urban) climate outdoors, urban heat islands are influencing the energy requirements and thermal conditions inside the buildings.
While the first part of the book focuses on the interwar period in Europe, the publication’s second part considers examples from all over the globe, tracing the growing significance of ecological thinking for the design of urban environments.

A new series highlighting design-driven approaches to urban climates across the globe.

I European Developments before 1945:
The Field of Knowlegde

Urban Studies of Man-made Climates
An Introduction


1 Thermal Geographies of the European City
Urban Hygiene and the Heat Economy


2 Man-made Climate by Design
Urban Climatology and Modern Architecture


3 Democratizing Urban Nature
Infrastructures of Climate Control at Large Scales

II Global Adaptations after 1945:
Three Design Metaphors


Design Metaphors of Man-made Climates
An Introduction


4 Thermal Heritage
Collective Memory and the Natural History of Cities


5 Microclimatic Islands
Thermal Spectacles and Closed-system Imaginaries


6 Energy-Synergy
Energy Ecologies and Settlement Structures

7 Singapore as a Model?
Urban Climate Control in Practice

Volume 1 in the series Klima Polis, Birkhäuser

City, Climate, and Architecture - A Theory of Collective Practice

The aim of this paper is to broaden the Eurocentric architectural history of climate control by introducing a discussion of the interrelation of architecture and thermal practices in the Southern Chinese “non-heating” zone. Based on a governmental policy that dates from the 1950s, China is divided into a heated North, where urban houses enjoy the amenities of a district heating infrastructure, and a non-heated South, which lacks this infrastructure. Most high-rise buildings in this zone are constructed without insulation, and a rapidly growing middle class heats under uninsulated conditions. Residents mitigate the winter cold through active means of climate control, primarily with electric devices that serve to warm certain parts of their bodies, or warm limited spaces in their apartments. This paper is based on a methodology that combines ethnographic building analysis, discourse analysis, architectural theory, and building science. Most of the fieldwork data - including home visits and interviews with residents and thermal experts - was collected in winter 2017-18, in the northern part of the non-heating zone of China, especially in the city of Chongqing. Our architectural view of heating in the non-heating zone perceives buildings as agents that mediate between the macro- and the micro-scale, between the North and South, and between inside and outside.

Article published in ABE (Architecture Beyond Europe) 17, 2020