By Jennifer Yoos
The growing crisis of pollution and global climate change has made the chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere the most pressing problem of the 21st Century. It has also made the performative aspects of architecture much more a part of architectural discourse. If we learn to see air as the essential medium of architectural space, we will also begin to see it as a fundamental material shaping habitation and form. If we avoid building metaphors of fluidity in favor of acting directly upon the temporal field, we may gain a new understanding more appropriate to contemporary conditions of architecture as a mediator of the environment. Architects could even move beyond ceding the design of air movement to mechanical engineers and HVAC systems and engage it as an essential issue in defining the shape of buildings.
Socialize