Mark Vender
The 99% Invisible website has produced a podcast dedicated to HVAC&R.
The program starts with a brief history lesson and looks at the work of budding engineer Willis Carrier, who is credited with inventing modern air conditioning in 1902.
It tracks the rise of air conditioning as a mainstream commodity, and its impact on building design. It then explores how we are once again turning to traditional methods of heating and cooling (in buildings such as the Pearl Academy in India, pictured), before looking at the potential pleasures of HVAC&R systems.
It features Stan Cox, author of the book Losing Our Cool; Steven Johnson, author of How We Got To Now; Gail Brager, an architecture professor at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, associate director of the Center for the Built Environment and an expert on thermal comfort; Lisa Heschong, author of Thermal Delight in Architecture; and Manit Rastogi, an Indian architect and co-founder of the firm Morphogenesis, based in New Delhi.
For an entertaining potted history of our industry and a glimpse at the future, it’s well worth a listen.
Image courtesy of Andre Fanthome and Morphogenesis.
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