'New metrics for architectural icons'

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3. Literature Review The critical analysis of relevant texts is appropriated throughout the study to showcase the context dependent narrative of calculation(s) informed from substantiated opinions, however briefly outlined below is the synoptic measurement of thinking generalised in the study of environmental design. There is the misconception about buildings that they only become damaging to the environment once they have been constructed, where emissions come from ‘processed energy’ drawn from the national grid which is powered by fossil fuels 15. On the contrary, buildings emit carbon in two ways, understandably ‘operational carbon’, the conventional census from the day-to-day supply of energy to heat, ventilation, and operation of electrical appliances. Secondly, ‘embodied carbon’ is lesserknown producer from the sourcing, construction, use and demolition of materials. Barnabas Calder’s ‘Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (2021)’ the period defining piece of work to distil an insightful discussion summarising the evolution of architecture’s dependency on fossil fuel availability. Inherently provides critical observations of the many architectural icons of history and their relationship to energy consumption, which as discussed, is indictive to the production of carbon emissions. Calder’s analysis of modernist icons pertains to the objectification of fossil fuel energy as a resource to power the many mechanisms that primarily involve the sustainment and production of heat. His investigation recognises the shortcoming(s) of the tectonic layering of the modernist façade, its slimness and inability to prevent the loss of heat 16 for Calder to question the exponential strain and effeteness of the heating mechanisms themselves. He determined that icons, generally predate the relevant technology to provide dwellings with an unsuitable environment of habitation, which led to their replacement on multiple occasions. “It was to be three years before the final lighting [and heating] installation was in place. The original coal-powered boiler was replaced in 1931-32 with an oil fired one, but after a few years this second smelly, noisy, ineffective heating mechanism it was replaced in 1939… La Roche spent 10,000 French francs per year on maintaining and upgrading his house. Elsewhere in Paris, in 1929 George Orwell was struggling by on just six francs per day” 17

15

Sophie Pelsmaker “The environmental design pocketbook”, (London: RIBA Publishing. 2015) 340 (Calder 2021) 347 17 Ibid 348 16

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