Fire and Memory : On Architecture and Energy

by Luis Fernández-Galiano; Translated by Gina Cariño

• ISBN13: 9780262561334
• ISBN10: 0262561336
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-26
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins of architecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops a theoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, from the mechanical and organic to time and entropy. Galiano points out that energy, so important to the origin of architectural theory in Vitruvius's time, has been absent from architectural theory since the introduction of the "dictatorship of the eye" over that of the skin. With Fire and Memory, he reintroduces energy to the discussion of architecture and reminds us that the sense of touch is as necessary to an understanding of the environment as the sense of sight.

Table of Contents

Preface	xii
one Architecture Discovers Fire	2	(32)
Construction and Combustion in the Oven and the Hearth
On matter and energy	3	(2)
architecture between mud and breath
The building as an exosomatic artifact	5	(2)
a process containing processes
The hut and the bonfire	7	(2)
built order, combustible disorder
Fire in the childhood of architecture	9	(6)
myths of origin, foundation rites
Fire in the architecture of childhood	15	(2)
nostalgias and dreams
Besides the fire that dwells in buildings, the fire that builds the dwelling	17	(17)
The clockwork sun and the unpredictable fire
cosmologies and cosmogonies	22	(2)
A philosophical building and two building philosophies
Solar Le Corbusier, igneous Wright	24	(10)
two The Heating of the World, from Newton to Carnot	34	(28)
From Celestial Mechanics to Earthly Thermodynamics
The mechanistic paradigm and thermodynamics	35	(3)
trajectories and processes
Newtonian architectures	38	(1)
cenotaph and Panopticon, symbol and function of mechanism
The challenge of a strange science	39	(8)
necessity and chance in the face of fire and orbits
Thermodynamics of the first principle	47	(2)
Joule and the culture of energy
Thermodynamics of the second principle	49	(6)
Clausius and the culture of entropy
Time and entropy	55	(2)
irreversibility and duration
Entropy, order, probability, information	57	(5)
Darwin versus Carnot?
three Architecture, Memory, and Entropy: Amnesia or History	62	(38)
Morphological Persistence: Lazy Forms and Obstinate Time
Energy that accumulates as information	63	(4)
the memory of matter
From the amnesia of modernity to architecture as a support for memory	67	(3)
The transmission of information	70	(2)
the genetic and the cultural channels
The Lamarckian evolution of culture and the fallacy of biological analogies	72	(4)
Architectural genotypes and phenotypes	76	(3)
power and risks of the metaphor
The energy that flows to maintain conformation	79	(8)
the heteronomy of the built domain
Architecture and entropy	87	(5)
for a theory of rehabilitation
``Obstinate time'' and the ``restoration of buildings,'' according to Alberti	92	(2)
The consistence of form	94	(6)
homeostasis and hysteresis
four Paradigms of Life and Thermodynamic Architectures	100	(28)
Heliotechnology, Bioclimatism, Rehabilitation: Between Energy and Entropy
The architecture of energy	101	(1)
new organicism or new functionalism?
Life and entropy	102	(2)
organisms as open thermodynamic systems
The architecture of the first principle	104	(8)
heliotechnic mechanicism
Cultures of entropy	112	(2)
Georgescu's pessimism and Prigogine's optimism
The debate on dissipative structures as a new paradigm	114	(5)
Architectures of the second principle	119	(5)
bioclimatism and rehabilitation
Thermodynamic architectures confronting time and function	124	(4)
five Organisms and Mechanisms, Metaphors of Architecture	128	(52)
Mechanical, Thermal and Cybernetic Machines versus the Living and the Built
On the fraternity between buildings, living beings, and machines	129	(2)
Mechanical organisms	131	(8)
from the bete machine to the automaton
From the clock to the steam machine	139	(2)
thermodynamic Freud
From the engine to the servomechanism	141	(4)
a cybernetic anthropology
Organic mechanisms	145	(7)
mechanical machines and mechanizing machines
Living machines	152	(6)
between the golem and the cultural fact
Mechanical Wright, organic Le Corbusier	158	(6)
the biotechnical unanimity
Mechanical cathedrals	164	(9)
the functional machine and the symbolic machine
Environment and form	173	(7)
between tabula rasa and the memory of place
six Energy as the Currency of Nature: A Genealogy	180	(32)
From Social Energetics to the Construction of an Ecological Economy
Energy accounting, from myth to tool	181	(1)
The prehistory of calculation	182	(1)
Physiocrats and the tableau oeconomique
Energy equivalences, from Rumford to Joule	183	(4)
energy, currency of physics
Awareness of scarcity and waste in Jevons's Coal Question	187	(4)
The heyday of energy theories, from Rankine to Ostwald	191	(3)
Between physical and biological economics	194	(3)
Geddes and the ``vital budget''
Social energetics, from Soddy to Mumford	197	(5)
Energy flows in the ecosystem, between Lotka and Lindeman	202	(5)
Toward an ecological economy	207	(5)
Georgescu's entropy and Odum's power
seven Thermal Space in Architecture	212	(50)
Construction and Combustion, from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier
The silent place and the silent hearth	213	(1)
from primitive fire to thermal muteness
From the central hearth and the brazier to the chimney	214	(6)
thermal comfort and private space
Smoke doctors and glass doctors	220	(6)
fireplaces, stoves, greenhouses
Panopticon or panthermicon	226	(7)
homogenization and quantification
Prisons and parliaments	233	(8)
practical developments and theoretical contributions
Visual homogeneity, thermal homogeneity	241	(10)
the age of the tube and the exile of fire
Functional neutrality and symbolic eloquence	251	(6)
thermal space in Wright and Le Corbusier
The cultural crossroads	257	(5)
excess and entropy
Notes	262	(44)
Bibliography	306	(8)
Index of names	314