ABSTRACT
Climate change and its metrics—energy consumption and the carbon cycle—have come to dominate contemporary discourses on sustainable architecture and design. The report stressed minimizing pollution, achieving clean air, conserving water, reliance on renewable energy, and poverty reduction in cities of the Global South as the overarching goals for accomplishing sustainable development. Although the Gro Harlem Brundtland Report and the blossoming of the sustainability movement helped to bring awareness to many sectors of society, including architecture and design, the concern for environmental building dates back to the 1960s and 1970s. In all of the proposed solutions, the relationship between architecture and sustainability, including climate concerns, relied on architecture's capacity to mediate the external climate through optimization of the building envelope. Peter A. Victor and Aladar Olgyay, who were twin brothers and Hungarian immigrants, pioneered the idea of Bio-climatic architecture.
