Architecture as a Thermodynamic System

The drawing above is a diagram of a heat exchanger, with the functions of the Archive overlaid.

Architecture can be described as a thermodynamic system, a system which channels or transfers energy flows, and a system that is time-based, a ‘continuous process’.

Architecture can be viewed as an event that occurs in the space of energy transfers. Energy is required to extract and prepare raw material for use in construction. Energy is required to construct the building, and energy is required by building users to control the building conditions, and to maintain the building from disrepair and disintegration.

Luis Fernandez-Galiano in Fire and Memory (2000) seeks to place architecture in the ‘field of processes and time’. After making the distinction between matter and energy at the scale of habitable architecture, he describes architecture as ‘a material organization that regulates and brings order to energy flows; and, simultaneously and inseparably, as an energetic organization that stabilizes and maintains material forms’ (p 6).

In the Archive, forms are constructed and maintained through the thermodynamic system – the forms are a function of the energy flow and heat transfer through the system. It is an open system, exposed to seasonal changes in climate – the heat from the sun, wind direction, conditions that affect the conformation of the archive.

The Archive occurs in the ‘space’ of phase change, part of this thermodynamic system. Phase change is a function of time, and temperature. Phase change creates form and dissolves form. Phase change is temporal, an event, a spectacle.