Reyner Banham's Unwarranted Apology

Architectural historian Reyner Banham has been a major influence on my work.  In particular, I consider his 1969 book The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment to be a monumental contribution to the discipline of architectural history.

Banham titled the introductory section of his book an "Unwarranted Apology." 

For what did he need to apologize?  The effects of the disciplinary divide between architecture and engineering—Sigfried Giedion's "schism."   Banham wrote:

"In a world more humanely disposed, and more conscious of where the prime human responsibilities of architects lie, the chapters that follow would need no apology, and probably would never need to be written.  It would have been apparent long ago that the art and business of creating buildings is not divisible into two intellectually separate parts—structures, on the one hand, and on the other mechanical services.  Even if industrial habit and contract law appear to impose such a division, it remains false."

The book then explored the immensely interesting story of how the development of architecture was shaped by mechanical systems of heating, ventilation, cooling, and lighting.  Although Banham had some grudging appreciation for pre-modern passive strategies, such as the shading of the Gamble house, the book is mainly a celebration of Victorian engineering and the evolution of modern environmental control. 

One of Banham's great contributions in The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, is how he began to establish an aesthetic theory for the next paradigm (what we now call Green Building, I suppose).  Speaking of Zanuso’s Olivetti Factory, with its hollow concrete beams serving as air ducts, and its clip-on air-conditioners, Banham raved:

"The building is serviced, and manifestly seen to be serviced."

Banham borrowed this insight and its distinctive phrasing from himself.  Earlier, in describing the Glasgow School of Art and the Gamble house by Greene & Greene, he wrote:

"About the way the structure works, there is a … frankness, but it is made demonstrative: as with many modernists after him, so with Mackintosh, structure must not only be done, it must manifestly be seen to be done."*

For the time, this was a powerful idea, that a building's mechanical services ought to be exposed and coordinated with the overall aesthetic expression, perhaps even celebrated.  This was, of course, before the Centre Pompidou and Lloyd's of London.

Finally, and most importantly to me, Banham criticized fellow architectural historians for focusing on appearance and style, rather than the technical aspects of the building process.  He complained:

"However obvious it may appear, on the slightest reflection, that the history of architecture should cover the whole of the technological art of creating habitable environments, the fact remains that [it] still deals almost exclusively with the external forms of habitable volumes as revealed by the structures that enclose them."

For the most part, Banham's challenge has fallen on deaf ears.  (There are a few indications of change, which I'll plan to discuss on this blog in the future.)  And sadly, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment is out of print and hard to find.  It should be required reading for architecture and engineering students.

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*Banham, Guide to Modern Architecture (1962).  Banham borrowed the construction from the popular British saying: "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done," which was written in law in 1923.

See also: Reyner Banham on Solar Heating

The Clothesline Paradoxes

In the 1970s, a new concept appeared in the solar house discourse: The Clothesline Paradox.

Peter van Dresser apparently coined the term in the early 1970s as a macro-level critique of the methods of energy economists.  van Dresser complained that when economists described total US energy use by source---oil, coal, natural gas, etc.---they did not properly account for passive solar energy.  He said:

"If you take down your clothes line and buy an electric clothes dryer the electric consumption of the nation rises slightly. If you go in the other direction and remove the electric clothes dryer and install a clothesline the consumption of electricity drops slightly, but there is no credit given anywhere on the charts and graphs to solar energy which is now drying the clothes."

In essence, definition one of The Clothesline Paradox says that there is an 'informal' energy economy which is not properly measured and credited.  Steve Baer popularized the term, giving credit to van Dresser [source].  I don't know if there is any attempt to account for this version of the Clothesline Paradox in energy economics today.  Perhaps not.

Later, Sim Van der Ryn (apparently misremembering Steve Baer) offered a second, micro-level definition of the Clothesline Paradox.  The paradox was that you could rely on a complicated, expensive, and lossy system of power generation to dry your clothes in a machine, or you could simply use solar and wind power by hanging your clothes outside.  Van der Ryn said:

"The clothesline paradox is a good metaphor for our inability to perceive locally available solutions" [source].

This second line of thought is especially paradoxical if your power source was a 1970s-era active-solar collection system.  In fact, Van der Ryn may have been remembering a cartoon from van Dresser's book Homegrown Sundwellings (1979) which lampooned overly-designed active-solar houses.  I reproduced this cartoon in the book in a larger discussion about the 'active vs. passive' debates of the 1970s and 80s.

Both renderings of the Clothesline Paradox made a perfectly valid point, of course.  But you wouldn't want to confuse the two.

See also: Steve Baer Resources

Edison's famous quote

In 1931, Thomas Edison supposedly told his friend Henry Ford:

"I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy.  What a source of power!  I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

Although solar enthusiasts like to use that quotation to show that visionary people have been advocating for the cause for a long time, you won't find it in my book.

It is certainly possible that Edison presciently said that to Ford at that time, but I decided not to use the quote because it comes from James D. Newton's memoir Uncommon Friends, published in 1987.   Newton was indeed friends with Edison and Ford, but he was 82 years old when he published the book, recalling a conversation from age 26.  There must be a statute-of-limitations for a personal historical memory.  Nobody else quoted Edison talking about solar energy in the 1930s.

In any case, Edison made no contribution to the history of the solar house as far as I know.  I'd be happy to hear from any Edison scholars about this issue.