Entropy is Not Simply Time’s ArrowThe implications of non-equilibrium thermodynamics challenge nearly all extant assumptions about the energetics of architecture; especially for the design of constitutively nonisolated systems such as bodies, buildings, and urbanization. The salient concepts and dynamics of these systems—acknowledged in this book through various, seemingly contradictory ways by Ludwig Boltzmann, Alfred Lotka, Erwin Schrödinger, Howard T. Odum, and Adrian Bejan amongst many others—stand to transform the pedagogies and practices of architecture. Yet these relevant concepts and dynamics remain unfamiliar to architects. As a model, these observations about nonequilibrium systems afford epistemological advantage over equilibrium counterparts. What is at stake, though, is much greater than simply a more valid scientific basis for the energetic operations of architecture. These concepts instead pose a larger intellectual transformation regarding the models of causality that architects wittingly, or unwittingly, employ to reason and imagine architecture: our model of models.Full content is available only for registered users. Please login or Register
