If one climatic condition can be considered formative for architectural design in Central European latitudes, this role had long been held by the cold. Due to increasing climate shifts whose contours became visible in the past century, heat has now replaced cold. The fields of architecture and urban design are at the core of a development striving for technological solutions that focus on efficiency and conserving resources, in pursuit of meeting prevailing temperature and energy supply standards. The implied adherence to assumptions about comfort and accustomed ways of living and coexisting is not challenged. Yet instead of attempting to comply with existing regulations and unquestioned expectations, architecture could be a vehicle to demonstrate experimental possibilities for how we could actually live together in a hot climate. Despite supposed impotence in the face of climate catastrophe, the contributions gathered in this book formulate manifold narratives that tell of the experiences, observations, feelings and needs of the (human and non-human) inhabitants of (fictional) over-heating worlds. What role can architecture and the city as producers of climate assume in the design of our habitat, in order to understand it not as a purely techno logical issue, but also as a cultural and social issue ?
Christina Condak is a partner with Vienna-based architecture firm NURARCHITEKTUR and a professor of design at the Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Michelle Howard is director of Berlin-based design firm construct concept and a professor of architecture at the Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Christina Jauernik is an architect, artistic researcher, and dancer working as a senior scientist at the Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Linda Lackner is an architect and theorist who explores in her research questions of visibility, inclusion and exclusion, and the manifestation of ideologies and past policies through architecture and urban design. Lisa Schmidt-Colinet is a senior scientist and deputy head of the Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is also a cofounder of Vienna-based design firm schmidt-colinet · schmoeger. Angelika Schnell is a professor of theory and history of architecture and of design at the Platform History Theory Criticism (HTC), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Eva Sommeregger is a cofounder of design studio eyeTry architecture and a senior researcher at the Art Academy of Latvia’s (LMDA) Institute of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Riga.