The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform

The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform is the first book to map the political implications of energy management in architecture. It reenvisions collective priorities in the face of climate change, at scales ranging from the microelectronic to macroregional.

Organized into sections covering power, territory, lifestyle, and risk, Underdome catalogs conflicts and affiliations among energy agendas to inform public action and function as a “voter guide.” Original illustrations reconsider architecture’s symbolic and infrastructural connections to energy politics. Probing essays by urban designer Georgeen Theodore and architectural historians Reinhold Martin, Jonathan Massey, and Michael Osman explore new histories and forms of practice. Transcripts from the Underdome Sessions held at Columbia University Studio-X NYC — which brought together panels of experts in design, policy, economics, and history to attack the climate crisis from multiple angles— create a larger dialogue.

Underdome is a call to action, urging citizens and designers to questions how political ecology can reshape architectural objects and objectives.

“In a world that privileges laws and econometrics, The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform offers deceptively simple and largely underexploited spatial tools for leveraging environmental change. This book is a bright diagram for a new habit of mind about design.” -Keller Easterling, author, Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space

“Billed as ‘the first book to map the political implications of energy management in architecture,’ The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform (Princeton Architectural Press) is a complex yet visually rich guide to tactics that can and are making buildings and cities more sustainable.” – Archidose blog.