A couple of links/discussion topics we covered today in our reading group (links in comments below). Thanks @anand, @fisch, Jun.

Concrete and glass steel towers are an unholy combination of “prospect and refuge.” What about shaded, climactically sensitive intermediary forms, particularly (tropical?) modernist ones that nevertheless preceded the postwar Great Acceleration? For instance: The Bungalow!

Air-condition dependent architectural forms are what Barber calls stranded assets. It’s all well and good to breezily (heh) talk about retrofitting downtown office towers to turn them into housing, but there are stubbornly recalcitrant HVAC legacies entailed. It means, for instance, the prospect of a living space without windows. Le Corbusier is rolling over in his grave! But maybe that’s discomfort for you.

Of course, one disturbing path civilization might take is, instead of learning to endure the discomforts of life less sealed off from climate, is to double down and “air condition” the outdoors itself. From there, geoengineering fantasies of stratospheric aerosol injection beckon.