Lecture #1 | Barnabas CALDER | emergency stop: a call for radical inaction
Barnabas Calder will argue that the built environment is the trace left behind by changing human energy systems. Once we have built it, it in turn locks us into patterns of energy use that are driving the climate emergency.
Calder’s presentation will explore architectural history across humanity’s great energy shifts, going back 14,000 years to homes built by ancient hunter-gatherer people, on through the great monuments of the world’s agrarian empires, and through to fossil-fueled modernity, consumerism, and potential climate catastrophe.
Tracing the past three centuries of construction in the industrialising world is a dizzying experience of soaring fossil fuel dependency and ever more extravagant energy consumption for making and running buildings and cities. Looking back further, or to the less industrialised world, provides inspiration and reassurance: we have lived at zero carbon in the past, and we can do it again.
Can't make it to the lecture in person? No worries! Tune in to our livestream or catch the replay.
Dr Barnabas Calder is Head of the History of Architecture Research Cluster, University of Liverpool. He is the author of Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (Pelican, 2021), which is also available in Italian and soon Japanese editions, and Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism (William Heinemann, 2016). He is a trustee of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. Twitter (“X”) and Instagram @BarnabasCalder
Organised and funded by Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, Brussels Academy and weKONEKT.Brussels.