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In the months since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived across the world, much attention has been placed on how easy it is for the virus to spread in indoor spaces that lack proper ventilation. Writing in the academic journal The Conversation, Shelly Miller, professor of mechanical... View full entry
Conventions and trade shows are now wrestling with the same challenges facing schools, religious groups, and professional sports. Whenever large numbers of people gather indoors, in tightly enclosed spaces with mechanical air circulation, odds are that spikes in coronavirus infections will follow. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, probes some of the existential questions facing large urban convention centers, massive facilities that have had their spatial and economic potentials deeply challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Saffron reports on efforts to... View full entry
Multidisciplinary design firm Cushing Terrell has developed a solution for air circulation and ventilation in patient and operating rooms to prevent the spread of infection. The solution, developed by the firm's mechanical engineering team, enables standard hospital patient rooms to be converted... View full entry
As society plans its transition out of the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response and into a new era of social distanced, post-quarantine life, the gradual re-inhabitation of existing buildings will necessitate that many aspects of daily life be re-examined, both in terms of social custom... View full entry
The built environment often shapes the spread of disease. Many early cases of COVID-19, the 2019 novel coronavirus, centered on a seafood market in Wuhan City, China. Airports, hospitals and other gathering points can easily become sites of virus transmission. But as the medical community grapples... View full entry
Commercial real estate brokers and building managers say sophisticated tenants specify so-called chilling capacity in their lease agreements so they are guaranteed cold cachet...There’s also the widely held misconception that colder temperatures make workers more alert and productive — NYT
Google’s new $700 million data centers in Taiwan will make ice at night, when electricity is significantly cheaper, and use it to cool the buildings during the day, reports Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge. It’s called thermal storage, and it’s basically a battery, but for air conditioning. — grist.org
Many of the central changes in our society since World War II would not have been possible were air conditioning not keeping our homes and workplaces cool. Florida, Southern California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and New Mexico all experienced above-average growth during the latter half of the 20th century -- hard to imagine without air conditioning — the Atlantic
Over Rebecca Rosen explores how one technology, air conditioning, made modern America what it is. From cooling our rooms, to shaping what our houses look like, and where we build them, "the advent of air conditioning has shaped our homes and family life as well". View full entry
