Name: Sean Lally
Price range: $

Today is a conversation in Kiel Moe about his book Empire, State and Building. The book plots the material history and geography for one plot of land in Manahattan – the parcel of land under the Empire State Building – over the past two hundred years.

Kiel Moe, ‘Empire, State and Building’.

So What is energetics? (Sometimes referred to as energy economics) It’s the study of energy under transformation or how energy flows and is stored (for instance on a site or plot of land as building materials like bricks, glass and steel) The book looks to this one parcel of land and all that was built there over the course of 200 years…where those materials came from and who occupied the land for what activities.

The book asks “How fast should architects move energy and matter through a system or site” and under what criteria do we judge these decisions. The book opens the discourse of what sustainability or efficiency means when discussing building and urbanization.

Kiel Moe

Kiel Moe is a practicing architect and author of several books on the material and energetic basis of architecture.