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Florian Urban

@florianurban.bsky.social

230 followers 83 following 20 posts

Professor at the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK Head of History of Architecture and Urban Studies (HAUS) florianurban.com

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Mar 4

#architectureandenergy Happy to announce that our book "Form Follows Fuel" will be released in September 2025
www.amazon.co.uk/Form-Follows...

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · 13d

#architectureandenergy We calculate kWh - human labour as well as firewood, oil etc. - in our book www.routledge.com/9781032636542 . Buckminster Fuller spoke of "energy slaves" - the human labour equivalent of fossil fuel energy. Look at the great comic www.bfi.org/2018/09/28/b...

Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age

Modernists believed that “form follows function.” Form Follows Fuel shows that in fact energy has been the biggest influence on the world’s architecture throughout the history of our species. The avai...

www.routledge.com

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · 13d

#architectureandenergy And apologies for not providing 253 million oatcakes with hummus at our opening event. We tried.

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · 13d

#architectureandenergy Thanks to the 100+ people who joined our book launch event last night at the Glasgow School of Art! Well done Chloe and Kieran @architectsdeclare.bsky.social for organising this event, and thanks to @barnabascalder.bsky.social and www.instagram.com/john_joseph_...

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · 27d

@architectureandenergy Please join us for our book presentation "Form Follows Fuel" on Thu 25 September 2025, 18:30 hrs, at the Glasgow School of Art, Reid Lecture Theatre.
Presentations by John Joseph Burns, Barnabas Calder, and Florian Urban
Free entry - please register with Eventbrite

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Mar 24

#architectureandenergy Humans are weak. A lumberman working without machines had an output of about 0.135 kW per hour (Swedish study by Lundgren/Zotterman 1946). Compare this to 11.63 kWh in a kg of crude oil, which last year cost only US$0.61– the equivalent of about 86 hrs of hard labour.

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Mar 13

#architectureandenergy Look at the radiators behind single-glazed windows in Gropius’s much-celebrated 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau, and check out the excellent analysis by @danielbarber.bsky.social why this beautiful building is not fit for purpose kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/pub...

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Mar 5

#architectureandenergy
Please join me at the event "Eco-Brutalism" at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle on Wed 5/3/25 at 18.00 www.farrellcentre.org.uk/whats-on/eco...
and if you can't make it, check out the exhibit, online or in person!

Eco-Brutalism - Farrell Centre

www.farrellcentre.org.uk

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Feb 20

#architectureandenergy What do the Khufu pyramid, the Arnol blackhouse on Lewis, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan have in common? Not very much – except that they were all built without fossil fuel – and figure in our book “Form Follows Fuel” (Routledge, summer 2025).

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Feb 10

#architectureandenergy Futuristic front, neo-traditional back: the Solar House in Milton Keynes, (Dominic Michaelis, 1981), part of the Homeworld Exhibit. The glazed front saves energy through passive solar heating - the embodied energy of steel and glass was no concern.

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Feb 10

#architctureandenergy Glazed “sunspaces” were a key feature of 1980s “ecological architecture,” as in the Futurehome2000 (Milton Keynes, 1981). They provided passive solar heating and brought down energy costs. Why did they come out of fashion?

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Feb 10

#architctureandenergy RIBA FutureHouse competition, Milton Keynes, 1994, designed for solar heating and a “sustainable environment”—and sponsored by the Federation of Petroleum Suppliers and OFTEC. No wonder why this future is still dominated by fossil fuel.

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Jan 7

#architectureandenergy A single nail, 20 g of iron—in the 16th century it took at least 3.8 kWh in heat energy to produce it, the equivalent of the muscle energy a labourer spends in 50 hours of steady work. No wonder why builders rather opted for mortise-and-tenon joints.

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Jan 7

#architectureandenergy Jianyeli, a 1930s lilong development in Shanghai, looks like a brick structure, but was in fact built on a structural timber frame, making sparse use of high-embodied-energy materials brick (thin walls, roof tiles) and concrete (floors, lintels).

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Jan 7

#architectureandenergy Fossil coal enabled scientific progress. Georgian glass panes, produced with cheap coal, were essential for well-lit interiors and thus for research, gatherings and discussion—as at the Royal College of Physicians, London, built ca. 1695.

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Jan 7

#architectureandenergy Tenements from local materials, both built ca. 1890: brick in Berlin (left), where stone was unavailable, and sandstone in Glasgow. The use of stone led to much lower embodied energy per m2 in the Glasgow example—a model for future construction?

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Nov 27

#architectureandenergy
@barnabascalder
Humans are weak. Their muscle power is about 0.6 kWh in 8 hrs, as much as 5 g of crude oil. And oil is still cheap –just $0.03 for 5 g.
No wonder why no one builds their house with muscle power any more, as people did on Lewis in 1875...

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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Nov 27

#architectureandenergy What do the Khufu pyramid, the Arnol blackhouse on Lewis, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan have in common? Not very much – except that they were all built without fossil fuel – and all figure in our book “Architecture and Fuel”

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Nov 27

Digging into embodied energy in historic buildings:
@barnabascalder
and I proudly announce our co-authored book on #architectureandenergy, working title “Form Follows Fuel – 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Present” (Routledge 2025). Follow us for sneak peeks

Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · Nov 27

#architctureandenergy Location matters also for low-embodied-energy construction: tenement in Weilburg, Germany (1828) from local rammed earth, and Alnatura offices in Darmstadt (2019), from rammed earth transported from 200 km away—here embodied energy is significantly higher.

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