Ducts in a row. Photograph by Daniel A. Barber
After Comfort: A User’s Guide is a new project by e-flux Architecture, co-edited by Daniel Barber, Jeannette Kuo, Ola Uduku, Thomas Auer, and Nick Axel, that explores the way we have come to live in buildings, and imagines how this life might change to reduce carbon and adapt to unstable climates.
How can our practices and habits within the thermal interior alleviate carbon dependence? Do these practices scale up to make a difference? Comfort considered in this way enters into dialogue with embodied energy and calls for reuse, as well as reconsiderations of the subject of architecture and its normative conditions.
Practitioners Alice Bucknell, Kian Goh, Ben Loescher, and Debra Scacco share their work surrounding thermal comfort and what the future of an adaptive Los Angeles may look like. The panel is moderated by Daniel Barber and Jia Yi Gu.
ALICE BUCKNELL
Alice Bucknell (she/they) is a North American artist and writer based in Los Angeles and London. Working primarily with game engines and speculative fiction strategies, their practice examines interconnections of architecture, ecology, magic, and nonhuman and machine intelligence. They are the organizer of New Mystics, a platform exploring magic, mysticism, ritual, and technology.
KIAN GOH
Kian Goh is an associate professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an associate faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. She researches urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. She is the author of Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (The MIT Press, 2021).
BEN LOESCHER
K. Ben Loescher is the founder of adobeisnotsoftware and principal of Loescher Meachem Architects. Loescher is a licensed architect in the States of California and Michigan, chairs the AIA Los Angeles Committee on the Environment, and sits on the board of The Earthbuilder’s Guild. Mr. Loescher holds degrees from Miami University, the University of Michigan and the Architectural Association.
DEBRA SCACCO
Debra Scacco's research-based practice spans the creation of studio works, installations, public art, curating, teaching, writing, community engagement and oral history. Rooted in personal experiences of immigration, she re-envisions the visible and invisible lines that seek to establish boundaries of access and understanding.
Daniel Barber (Moderator)
Professor Daniel A. Barber is Head of School, Architecture at UTS. He is a historian and theorist focused on environmental dimensions of architecture's past, present, and future. He is especially interested in how the pedagogy and practice of architecture are adapting to climate instability. He is the recipient of a 2022-2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, and has recently held teaching positions and fellowships in the US, Portugal, and Germany.
JIA YI GU (Moderator)
Jia Yi Gu is a Los Angeles-based architectural curator, scholar, and educator with a special interest in critical and alternative practices in architecture. She is director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She develops exhibitions, texts, public programs and experimental projects.