Cara Hähl-Pfeifer – författare

Our high demands for indoor thermal comfort increasingly contribute to climate change. For centuries, heating has been the primary driver of energy consumption in Europe and North America. In the 21st century, with global warming an undeniable fact, cooling indoor spaces has gained key importance. Conventional energy-intensive cooling systems, however, do not respond to usage patterns or to people’s individual sense of temperature and comfort, which is shaped by subjective, emotional, and cultural factors. Yet, the urgently needed shift in climate control for buildings demands we face up to uncomfortable questions: Who defines the standards for indoor thermal comfort? What costs are we willing to pay for our comfort? For whom do we provide comfort? And are we entitled to it?Air Conditioned explores the intertwined roles of architecture, technology, culture, and human sensibility in a rapidly warming world. From diverse perspectives and on various scales, the book examines social, ecological, and global impacts of comfort and ways to adapt for a more inclusive, climate-responsive, and resilient future.Air Conditioned is also a call to action to all of us: we must become more active and aware as users of our buildings!

This book investigates the hidden physical infrastructures behind the digital world. Data may appear immaterial, but it relies on extensive global networks: the extraction of raw materials, the deployment of thousands of undersea cables, and an exponentially growing number of energy-intensive data centres. While these data infrastructures shape global economies and politics, they truly do far more by profoundly impacting local communities, ecosystems, and labour conditions—realms so often rooted in (neo)colonial structures of exploitation. The contributions in this volume call for greater transparency, critical awareness, and care toward the material foundations of the data economy—as essential conditions for more equitable and accountable digital futures.Bringing together voices from architecture, media studies, technology, art, and political theory, City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground explores the elemental, spatial, and temporal dimensions of the architecture of data. The volume maps the costs of the data economy—ecological, social, and political—and opens up perspectives for rethinking digital infrastructures in the context of planetary resources, justice, and long-term responsibility.