Architecture And the Death of Carbon Modernity

Abstract

This essay reexamines the relationship between architecture, energy, and the climate crisis through the concept of the carbon form, understood as the spatial paradigm associated with a society organized around fossil fuel use. It argues that architectural discourse has reduced environmental concerns to matters of energy efficiency, overlooking the ways in which abundant energy has shaped carbon-intensive typologies, infrastructures, and modes of life. Tracing a genealogy that extends from modernism to digital design, the essay shows how the carbon form endures as both a material and cultural foundation of the built environment, reproducing carbon modernity despite the increasingly urgent pressures of the climate crisis. Within a context defined by metabolic rift, the Anthropocene, and the continued dominance of the carbon regime, the essay proposes transcending—rather than erasing—the carbon form through new spatial organizations that anticipate emerging energy and social transitions. Decarbonization thus becomes a central formal, cultural, and political project for architecture.