An analysis of urban architecture’s response to global warming.

After centuries of dealing with cold as the dominant climatic factor for architectural design in Central Europe, architects must now search for experimental approaches to life in a rapidly warming climate. Architecture and urban design strive for efficient technical solutions to meet changing climatic conditions and the energy standards they demand without really questioning customary notions of comfort, forms of living, and urban coexistence.

Despite supposed powerlessness in the face of the impending climate catastrophe, the contributions collected in Wiener Hitze offer a diverse range of narratives that share experiences, observations, and the needs of people that inhabit hotter worlds, both real and imagined. What role as climate producers can architecture and the city play in shaping our habitat if these important issues are understood not only in purely technological but also in cultural and social terms?