Stranded Assets

Comfort, and the fossil fueled systems that produce thermal consistency, are now seen to be major drivers of an epochal geophysical instability. There are massive consequences for these methods of designing and building, and for ways of life in the near future. Design and comfort are driven by consumption, distribution, and the prospect of a global increase in quality of life. This chapter considers the proliferation of sealed glass towers with mechanically efficient tightly sealed interiors. It also considers mediation and mitigation of climatic effects through shading systems. The projects considered are of interest less for their formal clarity than as indication of architecture negotiating its position as an environmental filter, on infrastructural and cultural terms, with little awareness, as yet, of its planetary effects.