KNOWLEDGE FOR A POST-GROWTH WORLD

‍Barber, along with four international speakers, will open the symposium with Block 1: "Knowledge for a Post-Growth World." This session will address the urgent need for the design and construction industries—responsible for a third of landfill waste and 40% of carbon emissions—to move beyond outdated models of production and extraction. In the face of ecological and social crises, the symposium will explore new frameworks that challenge traditional views of nature, advocating for regenerative and equitable practices suited to a finite planet.

Barber explains why it is so important to raise awareness on this topic. "Comfort is difficult to let go of, on both the individual and social scales. Thermal comfort encourages well-being and health; it provides consistency and predictability. Over-carbonized economies have come to rely on it. With the slow decline of mechanically-induced interior thermal consistency comes a shift in expectations and aspirations. Life after comfort does not have to be uncomfortable. However, it will involve adjusted desires, compromises, and difficult decisions. Today's form of comfort that has proliferated since the postwar era was only ever attainable by a privileged few. Climate change is making everyone uncomfortable anyways and the promise of comfort is only sold by those who are exacerbating the conditions making us uncomfortable in the first place. We are all after comfort: both getting over it and yearning for it", as Daniel puts it.

At the symposium, Barber will discuss two key areas: how to teach architects about decarbonisation and how design can be a part of the just energy transition. His 2019 essay, "After Comfort," has sparked a global conversation on the role of design in changing habits and patterns within the built environment. Barber contends that both design practices and social behaviors must evolve to achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. “We need to learn how to live in spaces without fossil fuels. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable”, as Barber put it. 

Comfort is a construct. Many new commercial and institutional buildings built over the past few decades rely so heavily on fossil-fueled mechanical systems that they would be uninhabitable without them. At the residential scale, buildings have been produced with an expectation of cheap energy, which has meant that adequate insulation, cross ventilation, and other design-based passive thermal measures have not been considered. Over the decades to come, enclaves where upper-class neighborhoods engage with expensive “green tech” such as electric vehicles and heat pumps will coexist alongside poorer areas that cannot afford to make any transition from the carbon-fueled lifestyles they need to get by. What tomorrow’s comfort might look like can be glimpsed by looking both back into the past and forward to the cutting edge of contemporary practice.

“In teaching architecture, the question of how the field can position itself relative to these challenges is crucial, with a focus on advocacy and civic engagement. In their design interventions,” Barber explains, “architects are increasingly operating as agents of decarbonization, concerned about building as a carbon medium, a carbon accounting.” As a historian, he examines narratives driven by technological change and also by customary strategies of building. “We need to be wary of both techno-solutions and nostalgic appeals to natural processes. He encourages his students in design and history to focus on  decarbonization. We need to critically engage with the fact that the history of architecture has largely been a history of carbon production. Most of the sustainable rationales have led to more building, more energy. How do we consider sufficiency measures and other means of reducing absolute demand as part of what the architect does?”

As the IABR 2024 symposium approaches, we are reminded of the power of education and innovation in transforming our living environments. During The Nature Of Knowledge on Friday September 20th, Daniel will be accompanied by many other inspiring speakers exploring these transformative ideas and be part of a movement that is redefining the very foundation of urban design. He is also participating with 'Climate Portrait: Nieuwe Instituut', a film exploring the climate control system and the comfort habits of the host institution. Find more info, the full program and tickets for the symposium here. 

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