Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy

Convergence is based on the thermodynamic premise that architecture should maximize its ecological and architectural power. No matter how paradoxical it might initially seem, architects should maximize energy intake, maximize energy use, and maximize energy feedback and reinforcement. This presumes that the necessary excess of architecture is in fact an architect’s greatest asset when it comes to an agenda for energy, not a liability.  But how do we start to understand the full range of eco-thermodynamic principles which need to be engaged with in order to achieve this?  Kiel Moe explicates three factors: materials, energy systems and amortization. When these three factors converge through design, the resulting buildings begin to perform in complex, if not subtle, ways.  By drawing on a range of architectural, thermodynamic, and ecological sources as well as illustrated and well-designed case studies, the author shows what architecture stands to gain by simultaneously maximizing the architectural and ecological power of buildings. .

Arts & Photography

Moe, Kiel

Architecture

Routledge

Convergence is based on the thermodynamic premise that architecture should maximize its ecological and architectural power. No matter how paradoxical it might initially seem, architects should maximize energy intake, maximize energy use, and maximize energy feedback and reinforcement. This presumes that the necessary excess of architecture is in fact an architect’s greatest asset when it comes to an agenda for energy, not a liability. But how do we start to understand the full range of eco-thermodynamic principles which need to be engaged with in order to achieve this? Kiel Moe explicates three factors: materials, energy systems and amortization. When these three factors converge through design, the resulting buildings begin to perform in complex, if not subtle, ways. By drawing on a range of architectural, thermodynamic, and ecological sources as well as illustrated and well-designed case studies, the author shows what architecture stands to gain by simultaneously maximizing the architectural and ecological power of buildings. .

The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture: Emergy Analysis (PocketArchitecture)

The laws of thermodynamics―and their implications for architecture―have not been fully integrated into architectural design. Architecture and building science too often remain constrained by linear concepts and methodologies regarding energy that occlude significant quantities and qualities of energy. The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture addresses this situation by providing a clear overview of what energy is and what architects can do with it. Building on the emergy method pioneered by systems ecologist Howard T. Odum, the authors situate the energy practices of architecture within the hierarchies of energy and the thermodynamics of the large, non-equilibrium, non-linear energy systems that drive buildings, cities, the planet and universe. Part of the PocketArchitecture series, the book is divided into a fundamentals section, which introduces key topics and the emergy methodology, and an applications section, which features case studies applying emergy to various architectural systems. The book provides a concise but rigorous exposure to the system boundaries of the energy systems related to buildings and as such will appeal to professional architects and architecture students.

Science & Math

Srinivasan, Ravi

Technology

The laws of thermodynamics―and their implications for architecture―have not been fully integrated into architectural design. Architecture and building science too often remain constrained by linear concepts and methodologies regarding energy that occlude significant quantities and qualities of energy. 
The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture addresses this situation by providing a clear overview of what energy is and what architects can do with it. Building on the emergy method pioneered by systems ecologist Howard T. Odum, the authors situate the energy practices of architecture within the hierarchies of energy and the thermodynamics of the large, non-equilibrium, non-linear energy systems that drive buildings, cities, the planet and universe. Part of the PocketArchitecture series, the book is divided into a fundamentals section, which introduces key topics and the emergy methodology, and an applications section, which features case studies applying emergy to various architectural systems. The book provides a concise but rigorous exposure to the system boundaries of the energy systems related to buildings and as such will appeal to professional architects and architecture students.

“Architecture” seems to be failing everywhere but its extremities. Goat Rodeo: Practicing Built Environments is a 110-page pamphlet comprised of 54 critical vignettes written by eight distinguished contributors—Phillip G. Bernstein, Carol Burns, Joseph G. Burns, Renee Cheng, Carrie Sturts Dossick, Billie Faircloth, Kiel Moe, and Michael J. Monti. This august group met periodically over five years to explore the nature of the problems facing allied professions in the building industry. Midway through their efforts to structure a joint writing enterprise, they chanced upon “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,” a Grammy Award-winning album produced by Yo Yo Ma, in collaboration with bluegrass masters Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. The writing group immediately seized on both the concept and name of Ma and company’s project, defined in the Urban Dictionary as “a chaotic situation, often one that involves several people, each with a different agenda/vision/perception of what’s going on; a situation that is very difficult, despite energy and efforts, to instill any sense or order into…about the most polite term used by aviation people…to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it.” In the same spirit, this octet of contemporary educators, practitioners, and engineers—drawn into common cause by radical changes in our understanding of the relationship between acts of building and the systems of matter and thought that surround them—offers the reader a lively, hybrid polemic driven by the unlikely juxtaposition of highly practiced instrumental styles and vocabularies. Each writer interprets the contemporary scene of design and building within a framework delineated by eight topics: education, research, equity, information, energy, infrastructure, technology, and collaboration. The resulting discourse questions what needs to change before the building industry can achieve a quality described by Bennington College President Liz Coleman as “discipline without department.” Convened and edited by Daniel S. Friedman, designed by Jack Henrie Fisher, and produced by Fried Fish, in concert with Other Forms, a mobile research and design collective working in the multiple intersections of architecture, graphic design, and publishing.

Goat Rodeo: Practicing Built Environments

Faircloth, Billie

Cheng, Renee

Burns, Carol

Friedman, Daniel S.

Bernstein, Phillip G.

Burns, Joseph G.

Dossick, Carrie Sturts

Monti, Michael J.

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Listen in on any conversation about architecture these days and you will almost certainly hear the buzzword of early-twenty-first century building—sustainability. But just how sustainable must a building be to earn that sought-after designation? How must architects reconsider the entire design process to achieve this important goal? Taking sustainability to the next level, the emerging practice of integrated design provides the strategies to achieve high performance, low energy, and cost-effectiveness, through careful ground-up consideration of how the program, siting, design, materials, systems, and products of a building connect, interact, and affect one another. This approach eschews specialists working in isolation in favor of solutions that are greater than the sum of their parts. 
Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture takes a comprehensive look at projects that exemplify current approaches to this exciting new field. From museums to residences, from office buildings to universities and yoga centers, this book showcases twenty-eight examples of integrated design that cut across building types, budgets, climates, and locales. Drawings, diagrams, and photographs illustrate how the many disciplines involved in the building process work together to create sustainable spaces that acknowledge architecture's critical role in our shared global community, economy, and ecosystem.

Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture

Reference

Princeton Architectural Press

In the architecture profession's ongoing quest for sustainability, it is often the most fundamental practices that require rethinking. Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture, the groundbreaking new study by 2009 Rome Prize-winning architect Kiel Moe, argues that water, with its higher density, is far better at capturing and channeling energy than air. By separating the heating and cooling of a building from its ventilation, the building's structure itself becomes the primary thermal system. This transformation of energy and building practices triggers a cascading set of possibilities for a building's health, structure, and durability. The first and only book of its kind, Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture details ten contemporary case studies, from some of today's most innovative architects.

Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture

Energy and design are currently imprisoned within a narrow framework of commonplaces, moral mediocrity, and outright error. Yet the platitudes that ensue from it continue to claim the attention of both the discipline and the fields of urbanism and design.The book’s hope is to foster a new ethos in design methods and new directions for practice that address the actual capacities and behaviors of the world we live in. Through a variety of short texts on subjects from the history of the sciences and philosophies of energy, as well as an array of examples of current work and historical phenomena, this book positions energy not as an ameliorating appendage but as a central instigator of radical, di cult and sometimes deliriously inventive new modes of practice and thought for current and future generations of students.With contributions by: Michelle Addington, Pierre Belanger, Luis Bettencourt, Manuel De Landa, Nicholas De Monchaux, John May, Olafur Eliasson, Mark Waisiuta, Iñaki Ábalos, Sanford Kwinter and Kiel Moe.

What is Energy and How We Might Think About it?

Kwinter, Sanford

Physics

Actar

This book considers the material basis of building as a key impetus of both urbanization and the energetics of urban life. The otherwise externalized material geographies and thermodynamics of building’s material basis reveal much about the dynamics and efficacy of how we build. This book plots the material history and geography for one plot of land in Manhattan―the parcel of land under the Empire State Building―over the past two hundred years. Through rich illustrations, it tracks all the building material that have passed through this parcel or remain in its geographic and ecological dynamics: spatially (in terms of their geographic material footprints and industrial processes) and quantitatively (in terms of embodied energy, embodied carbon, and emergy flow). In successive chapters, the book articulates the empire and states that are inherent to building, but remain unconsidered―abstract and unknown―by architects.

Empire, State & Building

No other concept has disturbed and disfigured our understanding of energy more than the seemingly innocent idea of isolation. Further, no other material practice in architecture has systemically reinforced this errant idea than insulation. In too many cases, architects and engineers treat buildings as increasingly "efficient" isolated systems without any regard for the larger energy hierarchies of a building. This is the exact opposite of how architects should engage energy. This book is a history of a most common material/energy practice in architecture: heat transfer and insulation. But this history aims for decidedly uncommon futures for architecture: fulfilling the potential of non-isolated thermodynamics in architecture. Much more than walls was insulated in modernity: in the course of modernity, insulation became a highly active physical, conceptual, and historical agent in the determinant habits of twentieth century architectural design and its associated construction practices. Non-isolated, non-equilibrium thermodynamics drive every building, city, and form of life. Their understanding helps architects grasp century-old thermodynamic concepts that position designers to finally capture, channel, intercept, store, accelerate, and modulate the total energetic dissipation of building through design.

Insulating Modernism: Isolated and Non-isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture

Birkhauser

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Books by Moe, Kiel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moe, Kiel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy

Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy

The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture: Emergy Analysis (PocketArchitecture)

The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture: Emergy Analysis (PocketArchitecture)

Goat Rodeo: Practicing Built Environments

Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture

Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture

What is Energy and How We Might Think About it?

Empire, State & Building

Insulating Modernism: Isolated and Non-isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture