For thirty years, architecture has chased lightness: thinner frames, bigger glass, fewer walls. The results are elegant, and they overheat.
Mass is a climate strategy
A 400-millimetre concrete wall takes roughly twelve hours to pass a heat wave from outside to inside. By the time it arrives, the night has come. Traditional builders knew this; we forgot it when energy was cheap.
Mass is a promise
Heavy buildings are built to stay. When the carbon cost of a structure is paid up front, the only responsible answer is to make it last two hundred years, not forty.
Next entry →