Heated Pollution

"Hitze" [heat] as a property of bodies, spaces and regions has shaped and continues to shape our thinking about architecture and cities. The lecture series, part of IKA’s 2019/2020 special programme Hitze Takes Command , examines the spatial culture of temperature, and its broader social and political implications, through the eyes of a number of contemporary thinkers. The historians, artists, scientists and architects assembled in this lecture series will explore the topic of "Hitze" in dimensions ranging from the soup pot to the troposphere.

Who can think of the future today without consideration of "Hitze"? Every exceptionally warm day is imagined as portending future disaster, while a sudden cold day provides hope that the ravages of climate change might be mitigated. Our experience of "Hitze" is overburdened with dread and yet, "Hitze" is also a form of pleasure – integral to sensations of taste, comfort and sexuality. We hope to discover and understand more about the realm of "Hitze" in explorations of fields that will shape the future of architecture and urbanism.

1 October 2019
Philippe Rahm
Architect, Paris
Philippe Rahm Architectes: Recent Climatic Archtectures

Urban planning and architecture were traditionally based on climate, comfort and health, as can be seen in the treaties of Vitruvius or Alberti, where exposure to wind and sun, temperature variations and humidity determined the shapes of cities and buildings. These root causes of urban planning were ignored in the second half of the 20th century due to the enormous use of fossil fuels by pumps, motors, refrigerators, heating and air conditioning systems that are now causing particulate air pollution, the greenhouse effect, urban heat Island effect and global warming. Faced with the climate challenge of the 21st century, we propose to rebuild architecture and the city on their intrinsic climatic qualities, where the convective, conductive, emissive or effusive replace the symbolic, analogical or metaphorical. The conference will present the recent work of Philippe Rahm architects: on an urban scale with the construction of the Taichung Central Park in Taiwan, or the project for the new Farini district in Milan, Italy; and on an architectural scale, with the new public space of the Maison de la Radio in Paris or the Climatorium in Taichung, the global warming museum.

Philippe Rahm is a Swiss architect, principal in the office of “Philippe Rahm architectes”, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. His recent work includes the first prize for the Farini competition in Milan in 2019, the 70 hectares Central Park in Taichung, Taiwan, completed in December 2018, the Agora of the French National Radio in Paris, a 2700 m2 Exhibition architecture for the Luma Foundation in Arles, France. He has held professorships at GSD Harvard University, Columbia and Princeton Universities. His work has been exhibited in 2017 at the Chicago and Seoul Architecture Biennales.

28 October 2019
Ulrike Lohmann
Atmospheric Physicist
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich
The Role of Clouds and Aerosol Particles in the Current and Warmer Climante

Clouds are not only fascinating to observe for their myriad of shapes, but are also scientifically challenging because their formation requires both knowledge about the large-scale meteorological environment as well as knowledge about the details of cloud droplet and ice crystal formation on the micro-scale.

Aerosol particles scatter and absorb radiation and with that cause a cooling, that partly offsets the warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Aerosol particles also influence the microphysics of clouds by acting as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles. The magnitude and geographical distribution of the cooling caused by aerosol particles themselves and by aerosol-cloud interactions is much more uncertain than the greenhouse gas warming because aerosol particles have localized sources and sinks and only have an atmospheric residence time of days to weeks.

An additional uncertainty related to clouds is that it is not yet clear how clouds change in a warmer climate. In this lecture, I will discuss the role of clouds and aerosols in the current climate and in climate projections.

Ulrike Lohmann is Full Professor for Experimental Atmospheric Physics in the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science since October 2004. She was born in 1966 in Berlin (Germany) and studied from 1988 to 1993 Meteorology at the Universities of Mainz and Hamburg. In 1996, she obtained her PhD in climate modelling from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Canadian Centre for Climate (1996–97) and Assistant and Associate Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax (Canada) (1997–2004). Ulrike Lohmann was awarded a Canada Research Chair in 2002, received the AMS Henry G. Houghton Award in 2007, was elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2008 and of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina in 2014. She was a lead author for the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). She was the coordinator of the EU FP7 project BACCHUS (2013–2018). At ETH, she was the head of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science from 2006–2014, is a delegate of the ETH president for heading search committees and vice president of the Lecturer's conference. Since 2018 she is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Research Council and was awarded a honorary doctorate from Stockholm University. Her research focuses on the role of aerosol particles and clouds in the climate system. She combines laboratory work and field measurements on cloud and aerosol microphysics with their representation in different numerical models.

25 November 2019
Philipp Blom
Historian, Writer and Broadcaster, Vienna
Natur's Mutiny – Nature and Culture in Times of Climate Change

An illuminating work of environmental history that chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, which transformed the social and political fabric of Europe.

Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and “frost fairs” were erected on a frozen Thames—with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.

Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A timely examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Philipp Blom was born in 1970 in Hamburg and grew up in Detmold, in Germany. After university studies in Vienna and Oxford, he obtained a D.Phil in Modern History. He started writing at Oxford and published a novel as well as occasional journalism, moving on to London, where he worked as an editor, translator, writer and freelance journalist, contributing to newspapers, magazines and radio programmes in Great Britain, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and France.

In 2001, Philipp Blom moved to Paris to concentrate on his books. In 2007 he settled in Vienna, where he continues to write nonfiction, such as Nature's Mutiny, as well as fiction, films, and occasional journalism. He presents a cultural discussion programme on Austrian national radio and has lectured on history, philosophy, and cultural history in Europe, the US, and South America. He is married to Veronica Buckley, who is also a writer.

2 December 2019
Nerea Calvillo
Architect | C+ arquitectas | Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
Heated Pollution

Due to the raise of temperatures and the increase of toxic particles in water and air architecture as a discipline and a practice has focused on creating better and stronger insulations from their surrounding environment. However, what has been left outside? Outside buildings, ways of thinking about nature and the environment, and the bodies that have become disposable? How is architecture connected to environmental injustice? Heat has become one of the biggest threats of cities, and yet its solution through air conditioning is only making things worse. In addition, environmental issues tend to be studied in isolation, and yet they are all entangled. Heat and air pollution, for instance co-create each other. Through experimental environmental mediations designed by C+arquitectas/In the Air developed in Seoul and Madrid, we will reflect on the challenges of designing outdoor spaces, the role of architecture in the current environmental crisis and how to live in polluted environments.

Nerea Calvillo is an assistant professor at The University of Warwick (Coventry, UK), in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. Her research explores the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution at the intersection between architecture, feminist studies of technoscience, new materialisms and urban ecological policies. Calvillo established the architecture firm,C+arquitectas, based in Madrid, and London, and initiated in 2008 the collaborative research project In the Air, to explore different forms of making visible air pollution. Her work has been published and exhibited in international venues, like Canadian Centre for Architecture (CA), Laboral Centro de Arte y Produccion Industrial. Gijon (SP) or the Contemporary Art Museum of Santiago de Chile (MAC). Currently In the Air is exhibited at the international exhibition Ecovisionaries, displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts (UK).

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