Authors of Urbanism: Form Follows Fuel with Barnabas Calder and Florian Urban

Modernists believed that 'form follows function'. In their latest book Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age (Routledge, 2026), Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder show that in fact energy has been the biggest influence on the world’s architecture throughout the history of our species. The availability of energy under different fuel regimes — including human labour, firewood, coal, oil, gas and renewables shapes architecture at all scales, from what gets built to how its doors hinge. 

Architects therefore need to look to the past, not just at emerging technologies, for inspiration in the urgent fight against climate change. Urban and Calder’s argument comes at a critical moment in architectural history, as the building sector currently accounts for 37% of all human climate-changing emissions. Despite decades of research and discussion, these numbers continue to rise. 

Despite methodological challenges, the authors have been able to calculate hard numbers for embodied and operational energy of 14 historical buildings, which they analyse in their particular social and economic context. Cases include architectural icons such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Baths of Caracalla, the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the Seagram Building, and Terminal 1 of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, as well as common types such as a pre-modern stone house, a late-nineteenth-century tenement, and a modernist panel block. Examples are taken from different regions of the world, including Scotland, ancient China, pre-Columbian Mexico.