Energy Accounts: Architectural Representations of Energy, Climate, and the Future

How does one tell the story of energy production, use, or conservation in a manner sufficiently convincing to influence policy, behavior, and design? This presentation will explore potential answers to this question through looking at the edited volume Energy Accounts (Routledge, 2016). The book presents compelling images, data visualizations, narratives, and other examples of accounting for energy. Organized into a collection containing both examples of best practices and critiques, an array of projects and contributors - including KieranTimberlake, SHoP, AMO, Abalos+Sentkiewicz, Lateral Office, WOHA, and more - combine text and graphic material to explore different representations of energy data. 

Two of the editors will discuss the book, and place it in relationship to their own research on the topic examining both practical and historical issues relative to energy and its visualization. 

Dr. William W. Braham PhD, FAIA is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he previously served as Chair, and is currently Director of the Master of Environmental Building Design and of the Center for Environmental Building + Design. He has worked on energy and architecture for over 30 years as a designer, consultant, researcher, and author of numerous articles and books. He recently published Architecture and Systems Ecology: Thermodynamic Principles for Environmental Building Design, in three parts (2015). He also co-edited Energy Accounts: Architectural Representations of Energy, Climate, and the Future (2016), Architecture and Energy:Performance and Style (2013), and Rethinking Technology: A Reader in Architectural Theory (2007). He is currently working on a project called, The City Always Writes in the Plural: Narratives of Urban Self-Organization.

Daniel A. Barber is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and a Lecturer at Princeton University. His research looks at the historical relationship between architecture and the emergence of global environmental culture. His first book A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War was published in 2016. A second book Climatic Effects: Architecture, Media, and the Great Acceleration, is forthcoming. He has articles in Public Culture, Grey Room, Technology and Culture, and The Avery Review. He lectures internationally, including a recent keynote for Que Fait l’Énergie à l’Architecture? at ENSA- Paris-Belleville.

Daniel is involved in collaborative research projects, including a series of workshops exploring the environmental history of architecture. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for the Environment, the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Courtauld Institute, and currently, a Humboldt Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center.