Living Too Close to the Sun

Daniel A. Barber is Professor of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His research focuses on environmental dimensions of architecture’s past, present, and future. His latest book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton UP, 2020); see also the article “After Comfort” (Log 47, 2019), and A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War (Oxford UP, 2016). Daniel has held academic positions and fellowships at Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale, at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, the Max Planck Institute (Berlin), Rachel Carson Centre (Munich), and most recently as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at the Universität Heidelberg. He received a 2022–23 Guggenheim Fellowship for his project Thermal Practices. Daniel co-edits Accumulation, an annual dossier of essays on the e-flux architecture online platform. He is the co-founder of the Current Collective for Architecture and Environmental History and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Architecture and Fabrications. He lectures globally, encouraging architects and others to consider their creative practice in the context of the climate emergency.