Public Lecture with Daniel A. Barber: How to Become Uncomfortable. Life Indoors after Carbon Dependence

Lecture: “How To Become Uncomfortable: Life Indoors after Carbon Dependence” by Prof. Dr. Daniel A. Barber
 
HOW TO BECOME UNCOMFORTABLE will turn the spotlight of climate action to one of its most overlooked and undervalued site: our buildings and how we inhabit them. For all of us, confronting climate change will mean finding new thresholds for comfort in our homes, our offices, our schools, that is, everywhere ‘indoors’. This means changing our thermal practices: how we use our spaces and bodies with respect to heating and cooling – from clothing to curtains, to seasonal habits and daily patterns. What are the skills and tools needed to better adjust, to reduce energy demand? And how can architects and designers change our buildings themselves to help us improve our thermal practices?

Daniel A. Barber is Professor of Architecture at the Technical University of Eindhoven. He focuses on how architects engaged climate over the last century, and on how historical knowledge of architecture, climate, and energy can impact the ways that we design, build, and live in houses today. His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton University Press, 2020), which followed A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War (Oxford 2016); his article After Comfort (Log 2019) has been translated into five languages. He is the co-editor of the ongoing series After Comfort: A User's Guide and Accumulation, both on the e-flux architecture online platform. 

Barber has held fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, and through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; in 2022 he was the inaugural Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universiteit Heidelberg. He was recently Head of School Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney; he has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Oberlin College, Auckland University, and has lectured at design schools and museums globally.