ABSTRACT
Before we know what to do, how to practice sustainably, we must know more about what we already do because technique is ourselves; we become our techniques. This chapter presents a narrative about a particular technique that is based on a relatively unconsidered – and unsustainable – assumption of our built environments: that air is a suitable medium for heating and cooling buildings. Few building systems or techniques in architecture acquired more ubiquity in the twentieth century than air-conditioning. Ultimately, air-conditioning techniques conditioned more than the temperature and humidity levels of air. These techniques eventually acquired such momentum that they also conditioned the design of buildings, cities, energy policies, pedagogies, and expectations for human comfort. Technique, as described by Jacques Ellul, “does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.”2 Air-conditioning as a technique exceeds itself, ultimately affecting multiple aspects of built environments.
