Barnabas Calder

All the credit for that to Christina! Amazing work!

Book Launch: Form Follows Fuel Join Barnabas Calder and Florian Urban for the launch of 'Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age' exploring how energy has shaped architecture.

www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/eve...
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/architecture-energy-climate-panel-discussion-tickets-1982186592457
#architecture #energy #environment #climatecrisis #ecology #sustainability

Book Launch: Form Follows Fuel Join Barnabas Calder and Florian Urban for the launch of 'Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age' exploring how energy has shaped architecture.

Two events next week for @florianurban.bsky.social and my book with @johnczulowskiburns.bsky.social, Form Follows Fuel. Come to a discussion with @jeremytill.bsky.social and Anthony Powis at U of Westminster on Tuesday, or our London book launch Wednesday 5pm at the Bartlett.
Links follow:

Why did UCL settle? As you say, it was grotty luck to be a student during the pandemic but we didn't have any choice but to move online, and resumed studio as soon as we were allowed. Whom do I get to sue for the fact that it wasn't great for my children of 1 and 5 at lockdown 1?

Thank you so much - I'm glad it's proven useful.

Front Row - Review: Wuthering Heights film and Jack Thorne's Lord of the Flies - BBC Sounds Former artistic director Jude Kelly on the Southbank Centre being Grade II listed.

I was on BBC R4 today talking about the beautiful South Bank Centre. Starts 19 mins in.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Winter Olympics Report 3 - Off Track YouTube video by New Weather Institute

Here's me prompted by Matt Rendell to risk the opinion that perhaps the #winterolympics could be less #climatecrisis and ecosystem destructive:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sfhW...

Yes, that's a weird one. Acknowledging the architectural origins, choosing a very odd source to cite for it, and then jumping to neoliberalism, is quite the rollercoaster.

Mutually so - thank you so much for coming.

Prof Tim Waterman lecturing to an audience in Liverpool.

Great to have @tim-waterman.co.uk speaking at Liverpool School of Architecture today. Masses of thought-provoking insights on our perceptions of our planet, and even some hopeful notes, which is quite a hard thing to achieve in January 2026.

Am I right in thinking it's all heat-treated as part of the processing? How much does that affect its embodied energy consumption?

It's nice, isn't it? I'll have to have a look at the Paddington one. It's weird how little I've used Paddington in my life.

The correct answer was:

Snap! And the carpet commissioning policy, too. But yes, another casualty of 2016.

Hahaha! Excellent trolling, then!

I will once I've given people longer to not recognise it first.

Nope! Sounds worth a visit, though.

A light fitting and the top of a pilaster

Guess #whatbuilding:

'The past is an underused tool': An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm In a deadly cold period known as the Little Ice Age, clever Elizabethan designs kept a magnificent stately home unusually warm – with lessons for how we can heat our own homes better.

Brilliant to see the BBC picking up Ranald Lawrence and Dean Hawkes' fabulously interesting and important #environmentalhumanities work on #HardwickHall. They measured solar gain to understand Elizabethan comfort tech.
The original articles are hugely worth reading too.
www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Did anyone snap the Foster/Holcim Essential Homes prototype at the Venice Biennale 2023? If so might I be able to use your photo for an article? I'm not getting replies to my request for permission.

Form Follows Fuel - a book by Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder about the energy history of architecture.

The wonderful @johnczulowskiburns.bsky.social has joined Bluesky! Do give him a follow. He's the architect who produced the digital models of our buildings for #FormFollowsFuel, which enabled us to calculate #embodiedenergy for each of them. Also the stunning cover image.

@florianurban.bsky.social

Thank you Michael! Great to hear that ours is in your top 4! The others look great. More to add to my toppling "to read" tower...

4 Books and a straw OSB on a chest. 1. STRAWBALE BUILDING REDIFINED 2. FORM FOLLOWS FUEL 3. Building for People 4. Die Expontialgesellschaft

Fav books '25
No particular order, just bangers, no prisoners taken.
* Straw Bale Building Redefined
strawbuildingbooks.com
* Form Follows Fuel
@barnabascalder.bsky.social @florianurban.bsky.social
* Building for People
@holz-bau.bsky.social
* Die Exponentialgesellschaft
@deutschmann.bsky.social

The great @milesglendinning.bsky.social has joined bluesky! Please follow him if you're interested in #housing, #heritage and #architecturalhistory.

Quite right!!

Malcolm Fraser architect backs keeping Argyle House, Edinburgh. Redevelop don't demolish. #brutalist #architecture
@barnabascalder.bsky.social
#embodiedcarbon

Yes, that makes sense. But giving the bald figures is the first thing: this cost x kWh to build, and y kWh to run the way we're running it in practice. Those are knowable, clear figures we need to reduce.

Interesting - thank you!

Is embodied carbon a vanity metric? With ambitions for regenerative architecture increasing, it is vitally important that we measure the right things in trying to get there, say Barnabas Calder and Florian Urban

@florianurban.bsky.social found for our book Form Follows Fuel that it's v hard to get #embodiedenergy figures for buildings today. #embodiedcarbon is widespread, yet it's much less clear, and more vulnerable to distortion. Here's our argument:
www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/is-embo...

Interesting!