ABSTRACT
In the 1920s, modern architects addressed environmental welfare with available technology: air-conditioning units and updated mechanical systems. The attitude reflected in Reyner Banham’s seminal text The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment characterized the discipline’s urge to engage these new technological developments implicitly through form and space. Banham described the timely intentions for a technologically serviced form as “attractive enough for its rents to absorb the 8% cost increase for air-conditioning, fluorescent lighting and acoustical dropped ceilings.” By that time, architects had more or less accepted that their post-war skyscraper dreams were to be realized in a stark orthogonal and rectilinear aesthetic. 1
