Skip to main content

Wiener Hitze

Architecture and Storytelling in Times of Heat

Datum
Time
Event Label
Book presentation
Organisational Units
Art and Architecture
Location Description
Schillerplatz 3
1010 Wien
211a

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.