Main entry:

Fernández-Galiano, Luis.

Title & Author:

Fire and memory : on architecture and energy / Luis Fernández-Galiano ; translated by Gina Cariño.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2000.

Description:

xiii, 325 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Series:

Writing architecture

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 262-313) and index.
1. Architecture discovers fire: construction and combustion in the oven and the hearth : On matter and energy: architecture between mud and breath ; The building as an exosomatic: a process containing processes ; The hut and the bonfire: built order, combustible disorder ; Fire in the childhood of architecture: myths of origin, foundation rites ; Fire in the architecture of childhood: nostalgias and dreams ; Besides the fire that dwells in buildings, the fire that builds the dwelling ; The clockwork sun and the unpredictable fire: cosmologies and cosmogonies ; A philosophical building and two building philosophies: solar Le Corbusier, igneous Wright -- 2. The heating of the world, from Newton to Carnot: from celestial mechanics to earthly thermodynamics : The mechanistic paradigm and thermodynamics: trajectories and process ; Newtonian architectures: cenotaph and Panopticon, symbol and function of mechanism ; The challenge of a strange science: necessity and chance in the face of fire and orbits ; Thermodynamics of the first principle: Joule and the culture of energy ; Thermodynamics of the second principle: Clausius and the culture of entropy ; Time and entropy: irreversibility and duration ; Entropy, order, probability, information: Darwin versus Carnot? -- 3. Architecture, memory, and entropy: amnesia or history: morphological persistence: lazy forms and obstinate time : Energy that accumulates as information: the memory of matter ; From the amnesia of modernity to architecture as a support for memory ; The transmission of information: the genetic and the cultural channels ; The Lamarckian evolution of culture and the fallacy of biological analogies ; Architectural genotypes and phenotypes: power and risks of the metaphor ; The energy that flows to maintain conformation: the heteronomy of the built domain ; Architecture and entropy: for a theory of rehabilitation ; "Obstinate time" and the "restoration of buildings," according to Alberti ; The consistence of form: homeostasis and hysteresis -- 4. Paradigms of life and thermodynamic architectures: heliotechnology, bioclimatism, rehabilitation: between energy and entropy : The architecture of energy: new organism or new functionalism? : Life and entropy: organisms as open thermodynamic systems ; The architecture of the first principle: heliotechnic mechanism ; Cultures of entropy: Georgescu's pessimism and Prigogine's optimism ; The debate on dissipative structures as a new paradigm ; Architectures of the second principle: bioclimatism and rehabilitation ; Thermodynamic architectures confronting time and function.
5. Organisms and mechanisms, metaphors of architecture: mechanical, thermal and cybernetic machines versus the living and the built : On the fraternity between buildings, living beings, and machines ; Mechanical organisms: from the bête machine to the automaton ; From the clock to the steam machine: thermodynamic Freud ; From the engine to the servomechanism: a cybernetic anthropology ; Organic mechanisms: mechanical machines and mechanizing machines ; Living machines: between the golem and the cultural fact ; Mechanical Wright, organic Le Corbusier: the biotechnical unanimity ; Mechanical cathedrals: the functional machine and the symbolic machine ; Environment and form: between tabula rasa and the memory of place -- 6. Energy as the currency of nature: a genealogy: from social energetics to the construction o fan ecological economy : Energy accounting, from myth to tool ; The prehistory of calculation: physiocrats and the tableau oeconomique ; Energy equivalences, from Rumford to Joule: energy, currency of physics ; Awareness of scarcity and waste in Jevon's Coal question ; The heyday of energy theories, from Rankine to Ostwald ; Between physical and biological economics: Geddes and the "vital budget" ; Social energetics, from Soddy to Mumford ; Energy flows in the ecosystem, between Lotka and Lindeman ; Toward an ecological economy: Georgescu's entropy and Odum's power -- Thermal space in architecture: construction and combustion, from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier ; The silent place and the silent hearth: from primitive fire to thermal muteness ; From the central hearth and the brazier to the chimney: thermal comfort and private space ; Smoke doctors and glass doctors: fireplaces, stoves, greenhouses ; Panopticon or panthermicon: homogenization and quantification ; Prisons and parliaments: practical developments and theoretical contributions ; Visual homogeneity, thermal homogeneity: the age of the tube and the exile of fire ; Functional neutrality and symbolic eloquence: thermal space in Wright and Le Corbusier ; The cultural crossroads: excess and entropy.

Summary:

"In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernandez-Galiano reconstructs the historical, theoretical, and contemporary relationship between architecture and energy, calling on disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular on ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire at 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 origins of architectural theory in Vitruvius's time, has been absent from such theory since the introduction of the "dictatorship of the eye" over the other senses. 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."--Jacket.

ISBN:

0262561336 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
9780262561334 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Architecture and energy conservation.
Solar buildings.
Symbolism in architecture.
Architecture et économies d'énergie.
Constructions solaires.
Symbolisme en architecture.
energy efficient buildings.
solar buildings.
Energiebewusstes Bauen

Form/genre:

Writings.

Added entries:

Writing architecture.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 214568
Call No.: NA44.F3635.A35 2000
Status: External loan