AJ Climate Champions podcast: Barnabas Calder revisits architectural history through the lens of energy

In the latest AJ Climate Champions podcast, Barnabas Calder charts the course of architectural history from hunter gatherers’ earliest mud and bone huts through coal-powered industrial Liverpool all the way to today’s search for regenerative design in the RIBA Stirling Prize-nominated Cork House.

Calder explains to co-hosts Hattie Hartman and George Morgan why he believes architecture has always been shaped by the energy sources available, and why he’s concluded that ‘small is good’, deciding to retrofit his current Liverpool terrace rather than upgrade to a larger home.

To catch up on all AJ Climate Champions episodes, click here.

Find Climate Champions on your favourite podcast app: subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer and Podbean

About Barnabas Calder

Barnabas is an architectural historian, senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool and author of Raw Concrete: the Beauty of Brutalism (2016). Published this week, his new book, Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency revisits architectural history through the lens of the energy sources available through the centuries.

Calder tours readers through the pyramids, Greek temples and Rome’s Baths of Caracalla, all the while explaining the human endeavour and agricultural trends that shaped these landmarks. Portraying coal as the ‘the devil in Paradise Lost’, Calder describes how it enabled London to surpass the population of ancient Rome and powered ‘the march of bricks and mortar’ across the UK in rows of terraced homes and industrial factories.

Calder’s treatise looks not only back but forward, querying how architecture can reinvent itself in the face of climate emergency.

Show notes: resources mentioned in this episode

Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency by Barnabas Calder (Pelican, 2021)

The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
Annual Symposium: Architectural History + Climate Emergency  June 9 – 18, 2021
Bernard Rudofsky,  Architecture without Architects (MOMA, 1964)
Reyner Banham The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment (Univ of Chicago, 1984)
Cork House by Matthew Barnett Howland, Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton

Source:Matthew Barnett Howland

Cork House, Berkshire by Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton)

Power to the People by Kander, Malanima and Warde (Princeton Univ Press, 2014)
The Baths of Caracalla by Janet DeLaine (Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997)
The Birth of Modern London by Elizabeth McKellar (Manchester Univ Press, 2^nd ed, 2021)
Jiat-Hwee Chang on tropical architecture

Steve Webb on stone: AJ Climate Champions Episode 8

Credits

Climate Champions is produced in association with ACAN, the Architects’ Climate Action Network
Podcast produced and edited by Simon Aldous
Music: Edmilson do Pífano, Forró de dois Amigos. Interpretation: Felipe Tanaka e banda Balaio de Baião