Description
Book SynopsisA House in the Sun describes a number of experiments in solar house heating in American architectural, engineering, political, economic, and corporate contexts from the beginning of World War II until the late 1950s. Houses were built across the Midwest, Northeast, and Southwestern United States, and also proposed for sites in India, South Africa, and Morocco. These experiments developed in parallel to transformations in the discussion of modern architecture, relying on new materials and design ideas for both energy efficiency and claims to cultural relevance. Architects were among the myriad cultural and scientific actors to see the solar house as an important designed element of the American future. These experiments also developed as part of a wider analysis of the globe as an interconnected geophysical system. Perceived resource limitations in the immediate postwar period led to new understandings of the relationship between energy, technology and economy. The solar house - both as
Trade ReviewBarber's insights on solar architecture build upon the classic works on architecture and technology from Giedion, Mumford, and Banham as well as the twentieth-century histories of Ecological Architecture and Building Science. His emphasis on the researchers and practitioners who designed, built, and operated experimental houses shows how solar housing design contributed to new conceptions of culture and society in an era of increasing industrialization and globalization. * Andrew Karvonen, Technology and Culture *
[E]ngaging and wonderfully illustrated work. A House in the Sun provides a nuanced optimism that such bleak conditions can also be the springboard to action and can reconfigure how architecture sees itself, empowering it as a cultural tool that moderates political, social and environmental impacts. * Daniel J. Ryan, Fabrications *
Barber eloquently reveals how architecture became subservient to larger global forces of managerial politics and how the language of the modern solar house has functioned as a vessel to endow efforts of harnessing clean energy, as opposed to the dirty extraction of fossil fuels. Overall, Barber's richly illustrated book brings an astonishing number of unexplored histories and resources of the early postwar period to light, unwrapping the convoluted ethics of interdisciplinary experimental collaborations that we now effortlessly address as environmental concerns. * Lydia Kallipoliti, Journal of Architectural Education *
A House in the Sun is a foundational text for a new expanded history of architecture's relationship to environment. In it, both the house and the sun undergo a fascinating series of formal, historical and theoretical phase-shifts, each altering the other's structures of transmission, reflection, absorption and radiation. * Larry Busbea, Journal of Architecture *
A House in the Sun carefully articulates the complex, and often tacit, role of architects in the postwar entanglement of technology, politics, economics, and ecology, especially in the United States ... With clarity, breadth, and great detail, Barber articulates the bright prehistory of the transformations of the architect in the solar-house era ... A House in the Sun is a robust and generous contribution that will help architects and historians to better conceptualize and situate their practices within the complexity of architecture and energy in the United States. * Kiel Moe, Constructs *
The author provides a thorough, in-depth historical study of the rise and fall of solar houses, the key players (ranging from architects to academics) involved, and the extensive innovation and experimentation generated and relayed through exhibitions, publications, and competitions. Detailed black-and-white and color illustrations are strategically placed to enhance the text. A well-researched prequel to any book on mid-century modern or postwar energy policy ... Recommended. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction: Architecture, Technology, and Politics 1. The Modern Solar House 2. What is a House? 3. Discovering Renewable Resources 4. Experimental Dwellings 5. All-Solar Houses 6. The World Solar Energy Project 7. Design and Research 8. Architecture and the Sun Conclusion: Architecture and Environmentalism Notes Bibliography Index
