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comment by NotPhil
NotPhil  ·  4067 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to live without air conditioning

    air conditioning is one of the things i hate the most about modern society.

I don't dislike air conditioning; I dislike our dependence on it.

I just don't get why architects will use the same design for a building in the Southwest and a building in the Northeast. We have millennia worth of examples of how to design buildings for different climates, but we just build sealed masonry boxes and then blast the air conditioners in them instead. It's a waste of energy.





user-inactivated  ·  4067 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I don't dislike air conditioning; I dislike our dependence on it.

I suppose this is the proper way of saying it. I'm lazy with my specificity sometimes.

    I just don't get why architects will use the same design for a building in the Southwest and a building in the Northeast.

Architecture isn't part of regional culture anymore. It wouldn't be unusual for the same architect to design a buildings in both locations, or even one building that's duplicated in both locations.

When buildings are contracted, they are subject to the same nearsightedness as the rest of the economy: they pick something 'good enough' and cheap as possible. So that means cookie-cutter design.