Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency
Barnabas Calder
A groundbreaking history of architecture told through the relationship between buildings and energy
The story of architecture is the story of humanity. The buildings we live in, from the humblest pre-historic huts to today's skyscrapers, reveal our priorities and ambitions, our family structures and power structures. And to an extent that hasn't been explored until now, architecture has been shaped in every era by our access to energy, from fire to farming to fossil fuels.
In this ground-breaking history of world architecture, Barnabas Calder takes us on a dazzling tour of some of the most astonishing buildings of the past fifteen thousand years, from Uruk, via Ancient Rome and Victorian Liverpool, to China's booming megacities. He reveals how every building - from the Parthenon to the Great Mosque of Damascus to a typical Georgian house - was influenced by the energy available to its architects, and why this matters.
Today architecture consumes so much energy that 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from the construction and running of buildings. If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change then now, more than ever, we need beautiful but also intelligent buildings, and to retrofit - not demolish - those that remain. Both a celebration of human ingenuity and a passionate call for greater sustainability, this is a history of architecture for our times.
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About Barnabas Calder
Reviews for Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency
Best Books of 2021
Herald
[An] engaging study... It has something of the appeal of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel - that of grounding historical mysteries in material facts... Partly a hymn or elegy to the world that fossil fuels made, partly a warning of the disasters they are bringing... Calder makes a simple and important point, often with engaging and unexpected detail: architecture is indeed made by energy, which makes crucial the next stage of its evolution
Rowan Moore
Observer
A survey of construction and its entanglement with energy use... Superb
Financial Times
An essential read: clarifying, alarming, but hopeful
Architects' Journal
An insightful, often impassioned journey through the history of buildings
Simon Ings
New Scientist
[A] powerful, disturbing account of architecture and energy since ancient times
Andrew Robinson
Nature
Calder has written an energetic global history of architecture - energetic both in the vim he brings to a colossal subject, and in its particular focus... For the general reader, it's an entertaining and original introduction to the history of architecture. For the architect, it helpfully sets the daunting challenges of our day in lively and inspiring context
Will Wiles
RIBA
A highly readable world history of architecture... This book will help to reinforce the crucial role of architecture in tackling the climate crisis
Catherine Croft
RIBA Journal
Calder's brilliant book [...arises from] a truly astonishing depth and breadth of research [...and] develops a new frame for architectural writing which frankly makes some of the previous architectural histories look at best parochial, or at worst irrelevant in the face of the global climate crisis
Professor Jeremy Till
Buildings and Cities
A brilliantly written and timely investigation into a fundamental truth that is often overlooked: energy, in particular the availability of certain types of fuel, is perhaps the single most important driver of architectural design
Florian Urban, Professor of Architectural History, Glasgow School of Art