The Industrial Revolution triggered both modern architecture and planetary warming. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to assume that there are also correlations between modern architecture and planetary warming (which accelerated after 1945, during modern architecture’s rapid global diffusion). This assumption forms the point of departure for this presentation, part of the Toolkit for Today: Carbon Present, in which Hans Ibelings discusses how planetary warming can be a lens to look differently at the history of modern architecture since 1800, and addresses the potentials, problems, and pitfalls of a one-track-minded historiography.

Hans Ibelings is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto. He is the author of a number of books, and currently finishing Modern Architecture: A Planetary Warming History, which will be published later this year by the Architecture Observer (Montreal/Amsterdam).

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Readings

Max Haiven, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (London: Pluto Press, 2022), 1-16.

Robert Hazen, Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (almost) Everything (New York: Norton, 2019), 81-131.

Vaclav Smil, How the World Really Works: The science behind how we got here and where we’re going (New York: Penguin, 2022), 76-102.