Public Programme of POWER
Traditionally exposure to wind and sun, variations in temperature and humidity, shaped the forms of cities and buildings. Yet, the “architecture of the well-tempered environment” (Reyner Banham) largely ignored these fundamentals of urban planning and building. Today, 40 per cent of CO2 emissions count for the building sector and its enormous use of fossil energy, that today cause global warming in an unprecedented way.
Climate change forces architects and urban planners question the basics of their practice the climatic and the very profile of their professions. Faced with the climatic challenges of the 21st century, Philippe Rahm proposes to reset the discipline on its intrinsic atmospheric qualities, where air, light, heat or humidity are recognized as building materials. Convection, thermal conduction, evaporation, and emissivity are becoming design tools that have the potential to revolutionize the esthetic and social values of architecture.
Parallel to the exhibition POWER, the Goethe-Institut Brussels supports the event series POWER Talks - a public program of lectures, roundtable discussions, and film screenings which among others features Thomas Auer, Daniel Barber, BC Architects, Oana Bogdan, Arno Brandlhuber, Koenraad Danneels, Andrés Jaque, Jeanette Kuo, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Philippe Rahm, Bas Smets, Paulo Tavares, Ola Uduku and many more.
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