MSD at HOME with Daniel Barber

Daniel BARBER with Hélène FRICHOT

Thermal Practice

Thermal Practice repositions familiar narratives and protagonists of modern architectural history, now revolving around climate and carbon as organizing figures of thought. Case studies of the thermal interior – as an aggregate of distinct designed spaces and as the experiential condition of politics and inequity – will serve as evidence for a history of architecture as a device of climatic adaptability; other concepts for rethinking forms of practice, models, methods and habits will encourage some collective speculation on architecture after carbon – its contours and principles, its obstacles and opportunities.

Daniel A. Barber is Associate Professor and Chair of the PhD Program in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton UP, 2020); an article “Active Passive: Heat Storage and the Solar Imaginary” recently appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly. His research and teaching narrate eco-critical histories of architecture and seek pathways into the post-carbon future. He is a Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg. Daniel edits the accumulation series on e-flux architecture and is co-founder of Current: Collective on Environment and Architectural History. Over the 20-21 Academic Year, he was the Top Director at the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities, exploring the tension between ’transition’ and ’transformation’.

Presentation and Q+A

Date: Tuesday, 11 May 2021
Time: 18:00 - 19:30 AEST* Melbourne (UTC +10)
Venue: Online - ABP Zoom Webinar
Event link: Once you have registered for the event, the event link will be sent to you via your Eventbrite confirmation email and reminder emails

*Lisbon: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 09:00 - 10:30; WEST
*Jakarta: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 15:00 - 16:30; WIB
*Dubai: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 12:00 - 13:30; GST
*London: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 09:00 - 10:30; BST
*NYC: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 04:00 - 05:30; EDT
*Los Angeles: Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 01:00 - 02:30; PDT

Image credits:
MMM Roberto, Edifício Seguradors, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1949, with shading device removed
Daniel Barber portrait by Linette Kielinski