*STS Circle at Harvard* [image: samuelevansresear/7D21F2C9.gif] * * *Daniel Barber * *Barnard College * * * on
*Phase-Change: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Solar Energy, 1946- * Monday, October 3 12:15-2:00 p.m. 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106 [image: samuelevansresear/7D21F2C9.gif] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to sts <[email protected]>@hks.harvard.edu<[email protected]>by 5pm Thursday, September 29th. * * *Abstract:* At the end of 1948, the electrical engineer Maria Telkes and the architect Eleanor Raymond built the *Dover Sun House*. The house was widely recognized as the first “all-solar house” – in the seasonally frigid climate outside Boston, it deployed a phase-change chemical system for collecting and storing solar radiation as the sole source of space heating. This presentation will position the house amidst three historical and conceptual frameworks. First, it will be seen as evidence of the heretofore undocumented interest in solar energy in the immediate post-war period. Second, the challenges of the house’s heating system will provide an opportunity to re-think the political context of technological experimentation. Third, the house will be seen as significant to the post-war emergence of new forms of expertise – and specifically, the amalgam of technological, political, and cultural knowledge informing the managerial disposition to resource and environmental problems that persists to the present. *Biography*: Daniel A. Barber is an interdisciplinary historian analyzing cultural, technological, and bureaucratic affinities between the history of modern architecture and the emergence of environmentalism. His current research is focused on the role of architectural technologies in the infrastructural and territorial transformations of the immediate post-World War II period in the United States, with an emphasis on the design of solar houses and the role of buildings in mitigating challenging climatic conditions. Barber received his PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He was recently a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and is currently a Term Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Program at Columbia University. He has also taught at Oberlin College, Yale University, Harvard University, and the University of Auckland. Articles have been published in *The Journal of Architecture*, *Design Philosophy Papers *and forthcoming from *Technology and Culture*, as well as other journals and edited volumes. A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/ Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS> You are currently subscribed to the Harvard STS Circle mailing list. [email protected] To unsubscribe, please click here: http://lists.ksg.harvard.edu/u?id=75176.c8dba4a21e684a2e8e9efff24641 0b59&o=57801&n=T&c=F&l=harvard-sts
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