From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of Ecological Design

209 Pages·2010·1.56 MB·English

by  Peder Anker

From Bauhaus to Ecohouse

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Published by louisiana state university Press
Copyright © 2010 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing
designer: Michelle A. Neustrom
tyPefaces: Chapparral Pro, Trade Gothic, Museo
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anker, Peder.
From Bauhaus to ecohouse : a history of ecological design / Peder
Anker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8071-3551-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Architecture—Environmental aspects. 2. Architecture and
science—History—20th century. 3. Architecture, Modern—20th > vii
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v

acknowledgments
This book originates from various guest appearances in Hashim Sar-
kis’s Green Modern course at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard
University. Students in the Ecology and the Human Condition semi-
nar and in History of Ecology and Environmentalism, which I cotaught
with Everett Mendelsohn in the Department of the History of Science
at Harvard, were also exposed to the material. I am deeply grateful to
Sarkis, Mendelsohn, and all the students who endured the process of
turning research into a book. I also extend my gratitude to the generous
students of the Science, Culture and Sustainability course at the Center
for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, and to all
the graduate students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to discuss different as-
pects of this book with Patricia Berman, Robert Brain, Graham Bur-
nett, Jimena Canales, Mark Cioc, Winifred Newman, Antoine Picon,
Adam Rome, Tarjei Rønnow, and Lars Svendsen. My wife, Nina Ed-
wards Anker, an architect and the founder of nea studio, has been a key
source of inspiration, along with my father, the architect Erik Anker,
who has stimulated this project in numerous ways. No words can ex-
press my gratitude for their generosity.
My colleagues at the Forum for University History, University of
Oslo, offered their time for intellectual discussions. I am particularly
grateful to John Peter Collett and Robert Marc Friedman for their pa-
tience and support. I am grateful as well to previous colleagues at the
vii
viii > acknowledgments
Center for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. I
have also benefited from discussing the entire manuscript with gener-
ous students and faculty members in New York University’s Environ-
mental Studies Program and the Gallatin School.
At the University of Oslo I had the chance to lure a series of schol-
ars to our Science Studies seminar and other intellectual events. I used
the opportunity to engage them in my own interests, which resulted
in invaluable discussions with Janet Browne, Peter Galison, Daniel
Greenberg, William Clark, Angela Creager, Michael Gordin, Sheila Ja-
sanoff, Matthew Jones, Dan Kevles, Gregg Mitman, Robert Kohler,
James Lovelock, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Simon Schaffer, James Scott,
Steven Shapin, and Sverker Sörlin.
Different, more abbreviated versions of portions of the text have
been published as “Buckminster Fuller as Captain of Spaceship Earth,”
Minerva 45 (2007): 417–34; “Graphic Language: Herbert Bayer’s Envi-
ronmental Design,” Environmental History 12 (2007): 254–79, published
by the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest
History Society, Durham, NC; “The Closed World of Ecological Archi-
tecture,” Journal of Architecture 10 (2005): 527–52; “The Bauhaus of
Nature,” Modernism/Modernity 12 (2005): 229–51; and “The Ecological
Colonization of Space,” Environmental History 10 (2005): 239–68, pub-
lished by the American Society for Environmental History and the For-
est History Society, Durham, NC. I thank the editors for permission to
use the material that appears here.
My thanks also goes to Joseph B. Powell, my excellent editor at
Louisiana State University Press, and to two anonymous reviewers of
the manuscript. I am also grateful to my first-rate copyeditor, Joanne
Allen, and to my assistant, Frøydis Brekken Elvik, who checked all the
quotations.
Most of the research for this book was done at Columbia Univer-
sity’s outstanding Avery Library. I am indebted to its excellent staff,
including Claudia Funke, and to the generosity of the Norwegian Re-
search Council for making the visit possible through grant 148068/
V20. My gratitude also goes to the Patrick Geddes Legacy in Oslo and
to the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association for
funding.
From Bauhaus to Ecohouse