The effects of the anthropogenic climate crisis has compelled a resurgence of scholarship about the often fraught relationship between the built and the natural environment. The connection between the building sector and the disruption on the physical systems of the planet are not merely coincidental but causal. Currently, global building activity produces nearly 40% of the world’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions, making architecture, broadly, one of the most polluting activities in human history.

That a new “climatic turn” appears to be taking shape in architecture history is no surprise, but does the changing climate also require a new methodology for writing architecture history?

If historians now know that architecture is causing ecological harm, how should the field of architecture history respond?

Seen through the lens of environmental justice, does the climate crisis impel architectural histories of environment to address decolonization and anti-racism?

Organized by:
MoMA x Iceland University of the Arts
European Architecture History Network (EAHN) Thematic Conference 2023
Ambasz Institute