Why read Fire and Memory?

Book cover of Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy

Book description

Architecture and fire, construction and combustion, meet in this poetic treatise on energy in building.

In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as…

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Topics

Anthropology

Genres

Design

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Why read it?

1 author picked Fire and Memory as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik

Author

Architecture is often referred to as an art and a science. This is a reasonably accurate statement in the abstract. In practice, we often assess architecture visually (artistically) and assume (hope) that the science is there (even if hidden). In fact, physics always has the last word.

Fire and Memory reminds us that thermodynamics matters and that buildings are essentially anti-entropic constructs. Who can resist a proposition such as “whether to use the wood to build a small shelter or as firewood for a bonfire. An entire theory of architecture is encapsulated in this simple question.” Or a chapter titled…

From Alison's list on environmental schematic design.