Thirteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

The integration of mechanical environmental systems for regulating the climate played a significant role in the development of modern architecture, but also resulted in an epistemological rupture that gave rise to a new typology of environment/space.This paper investigates the origins and evolution of environmental control systems in agricultural experimentation, specifically pineapple cultivation and horticulture, in the 18th and early nineteenth centuries in Britain. The advanced thermal requirements required for pineapple cultivation propelled the advancement of cultural techniques from the portable heaters used in orangeries, with their uneven thermal distribution, to the development of an exterior mechanical system creating a homogeneous thermal environment, an artificial climate, within the vegetal house. Experimentation in hothouses for growing pineapples in the nineteenth century led to the normalization of exposure to a new stable homogeneous environment, which provided a solution to the conflict between the interior and exterior, and gave rise to the concept of a ‘artificial climate’ to describe a third paradigm of space/environment: an interior space designed as an exterior brought from somewhere else. The concept of ‘artificial climate’ was accompanied by the belief that any climate in the world, specifically that of Jamaica, a typical locus for British colonial ambitions, could be better imitated and reproduced in hothouses.The study interrogates whether climate theory and climatic control arose from a desire to mimic a specialized spatial climate of a specific region, rather than an ideal “universal” model of abstract type, and how this architectural history informs our understanding of contemporary environmental discourse.