Wiener Hitze
Architecture and Storytelling in Times of Heat
Edited by the Institute for Art and Architecture: Christina Condak, Michelle Howard, Christina Jauernik, Linda Lackner, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Angelika Schnell, Eva Sommeregger
If one climatic condition can be considered formative for architectural design in Central European latitudes, this role had long been held by the cold. Due to increasing climate shifts whose contours became visible in the past century, heat has now replaced cold. The fields of architecture and urban design are at the core of a development striving for technological solutions that focus on efficiency and conserving resources, in pursuit of meeting prevailing temperature and energy supply standards. The implied adherence to assumptions about comfort and accustomed ways of living and coexisting is not challenged. Yet instead of attempting to comply with existing regulations and unquestioned expectations, architecture could be a vehicle to demonstrate experimental possibilities for how we could actually live together in a hot climate.
Despite supposed impotence in the face of climate catastrophe, the contributions gathered in this book formulate manifold narratives that tell of the experiences, observations, feelings and needs of the (human and nonhuman) inhabitants of (fictional) over heating worlds. What role can architecture and the city as producers of climate assume in the design of our habitat, in order to understand it not as a purely technological issue, but also as a cultural and social issue?
Publisher: Park Books, www.park-books.com
Book design: Alexandra Möllner, www.alexandramoellner.at
ISBN 978-3-03860-328-3
The annual project Hitze takes Command and the publication Wiener Hitze were generously supported by Immobilien Privatstiftung.