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These landscape features create the temperate microclimate that allows the cultivation of lemons in this area, but not a few miles away. And the opportunity to grow lemons in the Alps gave rise to a distinctive architecture, \u201climonaie<\/em> \u201cor \u201clemon houses,\u201d terraced greenhouses with movable roofs and walls, which when removed reveal a forest of columns. Facing southeast and warmed by the sun, these buildings, which protect the delicate citrus in the variable alpine weather, are designed in direct response to the character of their place. The lemon houses revealed to Victor the opportunity of architecture that responded to the climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The brother\u2019s architectural practice in Hungary was prolific and cumulated with their commission for the St\u00fchmer Chocolate Factory. Completed in 1941, this international style building incorporates a comprehensive application of bioclimatic design and analysis. They conducted extensive daylight model testing to optimize the size and location of fenestration under various daylighting conditions. A double skin fa\u00e7ade was designed to vent solar heat and passively keep the factory cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hungary was not spared the ravages of World War Two which decimated families, careers and dreams. In 1947 Victor and Aladar came to the US to start new lives and careers. Initially they were research fellows at Notre Dame, then they moved on to MIT, and finally settled at Princeton University where they both taught. They built on the work that they had begun with the St\u00fchmer Chocolate Factory and set up the Princeton Architectural Research Laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They developed a \u201cthermoheliodon\u201c at this research laboratory, a device that that allowed them to study the effects of different climatic conditions on building designs. This original research informed their ideas around orientation, shading, wind, and thermal comfort. In all their research they put people as the central measure in architecture. By exploring the relationship between humans and environmental issues they began to understand how to provide an ideal setting for encouraging human potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of this work they developed the \u201cbioclimatic chart\u201d, one of their most well-known concepts. It quantifies the effects of different environmental conditions on human comfort. In the middle of this diagram, is a shaded area with a man relaxing on a chaise lounge smoking a pipe, reading a newspaper, evidently perfectly relaxed. He is in the comfort zone. He is surrounded by climate impacts, wind, sun etc. and guidance is provided on how architectural design can be adjusted to enlarge the comfort zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Designing with climate is first and foremost a way of benefiting humans. While the Olgyay bioclimatic chart of 1963 contains the same core data as Willis H. Carrier\u2019s psychrometric chart of 1904, Olgyay\u2019s overlay of meteorological data and human biological needs on the bioclimatic chart provides an interdisciplinary approach that connects these ideas. Interdisciplinary or \u201cintegrated design\u201d has since become a fundamental aspect of sustainable architecture. Rather than remain an independent discipline, architecture can serve a unifying function aligning a broad set of concerns including technology, climatology, and biology to provide a composite approach to human comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1963 the brothers produced Design with Climate<\/em>, a book that weaves all these experiences together. The book is poetic yet crisply scientific, broadly interdisciplinary and graphically communicated. It provides a logical method for architecturally applying climatic design principles in practice. Bioclimatic design is shown as a regionalist approach which responds to place, an attitude quite different from internationalist, modernist principles. Yet bioclimatic design also embraced the efficiency, analytic science, and social aspirations of modernism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The close study of bioclimatic design continued to lead to further implications for architectural theory. The consideration of climate and architectural design concurrently uncovered both a Darwinian \u201csurvival\u201d component, as well as an expression of the motivation underlying the design. Darwin\u2019s finches evolved different beaks depending on the available food, and this biological evolution of forms in response to environment signifies that a formal morphology of architecture which remains to be developed. As Victor wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne can wonder \u2014 as nature expresses the climatic environmental impacts in the demonstration in flora and fauna, plants and trees, the basic rule that only organisms survive which are in equilibrium with their internal and external environmental forces \u2014 architecture should react in a similar way, working with nature and with it express a truly regional architecture.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Architects in the 1970\u2019s recognized the benefits of bioclimatic architecture, especially the comfort, reduced need for air conditioning, reduced energy consumption, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. It was the time of oil embargos. But the promise of passive design loomed larger; architecture could support the evolution of humanity, beyond the failures of war, beyond the adolescent struggles of 20th century civilization. For Victor, architecture held the opportunity for a better world. As he explained to his students:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe primary task of architecture is to act in man\u2019s favor; to interpose itself between man and his natural surroundings in order to remove the environmental load from his shoulders. The fundamental task of architecture is thus to lighten the very stress of life, to maximize man\u2019s energies and permit him to focus on spiritual tasks and aims. The thesis of this course is that this interposition between man and his climatic environment (the main factor of the total environment) is the physiological basis of health and comfort in architecture.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bioclimatic design, in addition to economically providing health and comfort, is now recognized as providing a critical co-benefit: it reduces the environmental impacts of buildings on our climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walked out my front door on October 17th, 2021, and I was greeted with an out-of-control wildfire 10 miles from me. Sudden and unexpected, it was not our first fire, and it is increasingly likely to happen again. Luckily Boulder Colorado only lost about a dozen homes that time before the fire was contained. However, none of us are far away from environmental catastrophe, in fact we are all in the same intensifying storm. The bioclimatic design approach now has a renewed urgency. We must design not only with, but also for climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, we have a clear understanding the role of architectures plays in climate change. We must quickly work to eliminate the vast amount of CO2 that is released in our built environment during construction and operation. Today our atmosphere contains about 425 parts of CO2 per million. To retrieve a stable, livable climate on earth we need to bend this curve back down to about 350 ppm. By designing new buildings and redesigning existing buildings to purposefully engage with their context and climate, we can readily reduce building operational energy use by 50% to 100% at marginal cost. We can heat, cool and operate our buildings without producing additional atmospheric carbon. By constructing buildings with materials and techniques that durably store more carbon in them than required to construct them, we turn buildings from a climate liability into a significant climate asset. All of this is being built today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Architecture is a reflection of our culture as well as a vehicle to benefit our society. When we directly address the critical issue of climate change, we concurrently support the development of our essential intellectual progress. We cannot let the threat of tempests, be they political or physical, prevent us from evolving a improved civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make place for change. When we make room for our inherent human inventiveness, we open ourselves to new ideas, unexpected providence. We grow. Inspiration happens when we provide protection from the severity of the world, while offering connection to people and nature. Walking in the trees, watching the ocean, listening to the rain on the roof calms our minds. Lifting the burden of concerns, architecture can provide comfort and the mental space to alleviate anxieties, in Victor\u2019s words: \u201cremove the environmental load from his shoulders. The fundamental task of architecture is thus to lighten the very stress of life<\/em>\u201d, and therefore, allow us to devote our creative energies to constructive activities, and create a better world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the increasingly dire consequences of climate upon us, we must apply our creative energies and create the space that moves us to grasp insights to our world. Conjoin the pedestrian and the sublime. An integrated approach that embraces our shared responsibility and engenders a renaissance of critical thinking. This is the promise of sustainable design; to recognize that it is possible to grow lemons in the Alps and inspire participatory reality on the coast of Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This piece was originally published for Medium, April 12, 2025. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Overlooking the Atlantic ocean in Darmascotta, Maine is John Wheeler\u2019s small summer home. A theoretical physicist, John\u2019s work spanned between the Manhattan project and the evolution of such concepts as \u201cwormholes in the space time continuum\u201d. Late in life, Wheeler coined the term \u201cParticipatory Anthropic Principle\u201d (PAP), postulating that reality is created by observers in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-projects"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/v2\/resize:fit:700\/1*TxzWJ5Ipe3N9T2KVG9_I_A.jpeg\")
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