The Anthropocene Style

This book explores the return of utilitarian decorative arts in the fight against global warming, offering an encyclopedic catalog of decorative elements with ancient typologies updated according to today's scientific knowledge. Until the 20th century, interior decoration in the West had a practical role, but with the arrival of central heating, air conditioning, and electric lighting, this primary utilitarian and climatic raison d'être became obsolete. Today, with the need to reduce buildings' carbon footprints and fight against heat waves, new thermal and energy reduction requirements are appearing, leading to a new decorative style specific to the 21st century. The challenge for interior architecture is to reactivate interior designs' practical sense and invent new modes of laying out, creating a decorative aesthetic specific to the 21st century.

Format: Paperback / softback
Publication date: 01 March 2023
Publisher: Haute ecole d'art et de design - Geneve

At the confluence of architecture, aesthetics, and engineering sciences, this book seeks to illuminate the unexpected resurgence of utilitarian decorative arts in the fight against global warming, while also serving as an encyclopedic catalog of decorative elements with ancient typologies (such as carpets, tapestries, curtains, and mirrors) updated according to today's scientific knowledge. Until the early 20th century, interior decoration in the West had a practical purpose: to combat cold, enhance light, or block cold drafts. Carpets were employed to prevent cold feet, tapestries to thermally insulate walls, crystals in chandeliers, like mirrors or gilding, were used to amplify the weak, solitary light of candles and small windows, and folding screens were used to block wind, while curtains were used to block drafts. The advent of central heating, air conditioning, and electric lighting at the turn of the 20th century rendered this primary utilitarian and climatic rationale of interior design obsolete, thanks to the widespread use of fossil fuels. As a result, old decorative devices were discarded in favor of the clean, minimalist, empty white interiors characteristic of 20th-century modernity, an aesthetic underpinned by the carbon emissions of oil-fired boilers and coal-fired power stations.

Today, with the urgent need to reduce buildings' carbon footprints and combat heat waves, new thermal and energy reduction requirements are emerging, including the call for 20 cm of thermal insulation in walls. One may wonder if this thermal insulation is not, in fact, a new form of tapestry, one that would unconsciously mark a return to interior decoration. If the modern style of the 20th century originated from carbon, then the resurgence of utilitarian decorative arts in the fight against global warming may herald a new era of sustainable and eco-friendly design.

Weight: 108g
Dimension: 105 x 170 x 10 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9782940510795