Time isn't linear - Air conditioning.

  When I was studying French literature, I took a course on literature from the Antilles. One of the literary devices that we were studying was that the people of the Antilles don't always think of time in a linear line, but as a web of causes and effects that blend together. One of the books we read was a detective story where the lead detective would talk to the suspects to trace after the clues. The direction of the dialogue with the suspects was always them sharing their life story with the deceased and how their interactions over time shaped them. It was this idea that actions in the past influence reactions in the future. As well as the idea that a person is not a solitary individual, but a composite of the surrounding society.

Walruses of the Arctic Hotel.

  Later, when I was studying architecture in graduate school, I liked to think of this concept when designing buildings how the past of the area could inform designs for the present that could direct images of the future. The professors didn't always agree with this idea. At one point, I was designing a building near the downtown core that was based on a studio exploring how architecture and urban design could respond to projected climate change. One of the driving ideas behind the building I was designing was that of the forests that once filled the area through the use of a multi-tiered projected roofline. In conversations with the professor (who would have preferred me to design a glass tower), there was an interesting moment of clarity about why we were at an impasse. The prof asked me what was my favorite building in downtown Seattle, and I started telling him about the Arctic Hotel and how the walrus grotesques around the building were a great regional detail. The other details and style of the building fit within the time period, but by referencing other time periods before.

The Seattle skyline with the Arctic Hotel front and center.

  For the professor, this was the incorrect answer. He instead directed me towards another building. I always forget where it is when walking around the city. I once read a post about the building calling it uninspired and that in trying too hard to be like the other buildings of the same time and that it got lost for not stating any individuality of its own. Not everything has to be a civic building expressing too much individuality, but there is something to be said about building off the ideas of what others have done instead of copying to blend in. 

  This concept of non-linear time can also be found in West Africa with the word Sankofa. It is from the Twi language and directly translates as "to go back and get" and is depicted by a bird with its head backwards and an egg in its mouth. Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates as: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." In relation to architecture, I like this idea as a means of readdressing design concepts from the past. Not all developments are positive steps forward in the realm of progress.

Awnings and shutters for blocking sunlight in Paris.

  One of the more poignant aspects of this is when looking at the developments in architecture since the introduction of HVAC. This development has been likened to placing buildings on a life support system instead of letting them live. Before air conditioning resulted in architects and engineers sealing up buildings, the science of heating and cooling included an extensive utilization of passive design. This would be the idea of employing shades, creating passages for air to circulate through spaces, and how opening or closing windows could help heat and cool buildings. Large glass towers become nothing but giant greenhouses that constantly battle with the sun heating up the interior by spewing cold air. These HVAC systems are a major source of electricity usage in a building. By reevaluating design considerations from before designing around air conditioning, there could be a decrease in energy consumption and thus a more efficient building.

Mini-split in a medieval pub in Rennes, France.

  Many of my courses in architecture seemed to treat sustainability as adding new technological gadgets to a building while not changing the initial design approach to avoid needing the gadgets in the first place. One problem with gadgets is that they require tending to and maintaining to keep them functioning properly. Whereas a passive design could avoid this altogether. When I was employed as a maintenance technician for apartment complexes, I would find myself having to frequently replace plastic mechanical parts and malfunctioning circuit boards that would be imported from China. All those pieces of disposable plastic didn't sit quite right in my mind of how to properly repair with sustainability as a defining feature. Of course, this isn't to completely say that we should remove all technology and return to the Victorian era. But if we were to design with the notion of passive ideas learned from that era paired with a contemporary mini-split heat pump, the efficiency would actually be quite a bit. Fresh air is actually a good thing, and we should stop sealing ourselves away from it.

Sudley House, Liverpool.

 Also, if we are to use our technology as the crutch it should be instead of the life support we have been using it as, why don't we make find ways to visually incorporate it into our homes. I have never been a fan of how plastic looks as it ages. I understand that it would be impractical to build all of these mechanical machines out of materials other than plastic, as it seems that some previous art movements have attempted to explore. For example the Arts and Crafts movement in England with William Morris trying to embolden cottage industry in contrast to the industrially produced machine, but the costs per good were not something that the masses could afford. Perhaps it is a bitter irony that his patterns he developed are now something easily found and produced by that industrial machine that he looked to circumvent. On a recent wander, I visited the Sudley House in Liverpool. The Sudley House is a Georgian-era house (updated in fashion to the Victorian) functioning as a museum of historic interior design and art in Liverpool. They had provided portable heaters in the rooms which would have been previously heated by fireplaces that were found in most of the rooms of the house, but converted to a visual display instead of a functioning element. Perhaps we should celebrate the mechanical beauty of some of our radiators, but I loved how they (with a bit of lovely woodwork) found a way to blend the mechanical into the room but still making it accessible for service. Time marches ever forward, but the skills and beauty of the past can inform our designs and settings of now.