Date: Thursday 6th November 2019
Venue: G04a
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Architectural history, especially when researched and taught from within an architecture school, stands or falls on the value of the contribution it makes to the understanding of the present.
Barnabas Calder's research into the long relationship between architecture and human energy capture reveals that today's emphasis on sustainability is only the latest phase of a long story. Ever since the first known buildings, 14,000 years ago, types and quantities of available energy have always been the single biggest influence on architectural form and the development of settlements.
Barnabas's seminar paper will highlight how the history of architecture underlines the pioneering position of Liverpool as an experimental centre for the architecture of coal. It will also demonstrate how a longer historical context exposes the astonishing energy-hunger of conditions that contemporary British architecture regards as 'normal.' The major buildings of the 20th and 21st centuries, like the Fiat Lingotto plant, dwarf Hadrian's Pantheon and the other great buildings of the ancient world.