Rediscovering the Forgotten History of Clean Energy Innovation

A home entirely off the grid, heated with solar power. Another made to resemble a park, with a green roof and daylighting. An apartment building in NYC with solar collectors and a wind-powered generator on the roof, which generate enough energy to power all the building's public areas.

We're talking about 2009, right? Nope: 1973.

Over at We Make Money Not Art, Regine De Batty reviews Sorry, Out of Gas: Architecture's Response to the 1973 Oil Crisis, a catalog produced to document an eponymous exhibition last year at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. The show's curators make the case that the oil embargo by Arab oil-producing nations in 1973, which caused an enormous price shock that sent gas and other energy prices soaring worldwide, spurred a parallel burst of creativity among designers, architects, engineers, and others interested in solutions to oil dependency.

Sorry, Out of Gas includes "a chapter dedicated to oil, from the embargo to the games that were created at the time to educate or even sometimes dedramatize the issue," says Regine.

I was particularly fascinated by a series of discourses pronounced in the 70s by world leaders. They were much bolder and more undisguised than the ones voiced by today's politicians. It feels like our leaders prefer to tread much more carefully and are afraid of causing us any discomfort.

The rest of the book is divided in chapters that correspond to alternative sources of energy and their use in architecture: Sun, Earth, Wind and Integrated Systems.

"Today, it seems that much of their work (at the notable exception of Buckminster Fuller) and ideas have sunk into oblivion," writes Regine.

(A symptom, perhaps, of the "shock to trance" syndrome that then President-elect Obama talked about in a mid-November interview last year: "You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know, filling up our S.U.V.'s again. And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.")

As the oil embargo ended and energy prices began to fall, apparently these architectural experiments ended. It's frustrating to contemplate that we've let decades slip by with little progress on reducing our heavy reliance on oil. But it's also fascinating to consider that the "green architecture" innovators of today have an unexpected legacy to draw upon as they make up for lost time.

This book sounds so interesting that I didn't want to wait until I could get a copy myself before mentioning it here. Digging around for some other reviews verifies that it's worth nabbing a copy:

"Though the book/exhibit brings together some interesting and relevant architectural examples, graphics and publications, like the journals of the pioneering Underground Space Center at the University of Minnesota, it is most effective at conveying the sense of the enthusiasm and creativity of those times, which dissipated as the years went on...until we find ourselves there again now, in a sense, picking up where we left off." (Center for Land Use Interpretation)

"Using everything from architectural drawings, photography, archival television footage, and historical artifacts such as board games and ephemera from popular culture of the day, the catalogue is divided into four central themes--Sun, Earth, Wind, and Integrated Systems. Sorry, Out of Gas examines everything from passive and active solar heating, underground architecture, recycled materials and experiments in wind technology to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy. Illustrated by British author and illustrator Harriet Russell, a magnificently and specially commissioned children's story entitled "An Endangered Species" opens the book's various discussions, exploring non-renewable energy and the ways in which children can conserve our planet's valuable resources." (Canadian Architect)

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Image: "Gas stations abandoned during the fuel crisis in the winter of 1973-74 were sometimes used for other purposes. This station at Potlatch, Washington, west of Olympia was turned into a religious meeting hall. April 1974." By David Falconer. Source: U.S. EPA, via Wikimedia Commons