ABSTRACT
Once understood as the bond that tied vernacular architecture to its locale, climate has now joined the list of things being put at risk by human activity. In today's architectural journals, climatic issues are often reductively framed as technical problems posed to buildings: heat, airflow and moisture make demands on construction systems and materials, designers work within these constraints in an attempt to satisfy norms of human comfort while minimising energy consumption and waste. For architects, the paradigm of insulation, thermal control and closure is dominant — at least in those parts of the world that suffer bad winters. With climate change however, a different set of issues are beginning to emerge. At the largest scale, climate is an open system — something that one is subject to. At the smallest scale, climate is a closed system — something one seeks to manipulate. The difference is crucial — like swimming in a pool or swimming in the ocean. Architecture has paid a lot of attention to the latter at the expense of the former. In either case, climate always seems to resist explicit politicisation — understandably so, architects are motivated by energy ratings more than ideological conflict. The widespread consensus around sustainability — the sine qua non of contemporary practice — is enough evidence of this view. And yet, even if it remains a largely technical matter at the scale of a building, from the point of view of the planet, the climate is now a fully political project. 1 How might one rethink architecture's terms of engagement in order to foreground climate's politicisation as a space of conflict as well as our imbrication in its other effects? Why would this be an important task to carry out now?
