Modern “sustainable”‘ innovations in architecture are failing to slow climate change, but revisiting ancient knowledge and techniques found in traditional architecture could offer better solutions.

This is the argument of architectural historians Professor Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder in their new book “Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age”. The authors argue that energy availability has been the biggest influence on architecture throughout human history.

Their extensive study is the first to calculate energy inputs for a range of historical buildings, demonstrating how different types of fuel, from human labor to fossil fuels, have fundamentally determined building designs across civilizations and eras.

“The history of architecture can be told as a history of energy,” the authors explain. “Today’s architecture is accordingly the outcome of four centuries of effort, innovation and ingenuity directed at maximizing the proportion of architectural production and operation that could be powered by fossil fuel heat.”

This 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, the environmental impact of buildings continues to rise.

Urban and Calder document how the shift to fossil fuels begins in the 17th century and transforms architecture more profoundly than any other development in human history. This transition reversed the previous dynamic, where labor was cheap and heat expensive, creating an architectural model which depended on energy-intensive materials and processes that reduced human input.

“If form follows fuel, ours is fundamentally an architecture of intense fossil fuel consumption,” the authors explain.

Even as society becomes more aware of emissions and carbon footprint, and more efforts are made to build sustainably, the authors prove that today’s architecture comes at a catastrophically high energy cost.

They explain how globally influential minimalist designs often depend on massive energy consumption, for example, the Seagram Building in New York, widely praised for its simplicity, received an energy efficiency rating of just 3 out of 100 from the US Environmental Protection Agency, and cost more energy to build than the entire labor cost of quarrying, transporting and placing 5.5m tons of stone for the largest of the Egyptian pyramids.

“Mies’s famous dictum that ‘less is more,” turns out to be missing a word: ‘less is more carbon,'” the authors explain. “Per square meter of floor space, it used four times as much energy as the average American office building in 2012.”

By contrast, pre-modern buildings like the Scottish blackhouse achieved remarkable thermal efficiency using only local materials and passive design strategies. Examples of buildings like these show how humans have always before been able to provide the interior space and thermal comfort needed for survival in a harsh climate, while being fully sustainable and recyclable.

The authors’ studies span 4,500 years of architectural history, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The authors offer practical solutions for contemporary architects by unpicking the specific energy costs of different building elements and materials. For instance, their research demonstrates how structural stone tenements used significantly less energy throughout their life cycle than similar brick buildings, providing quantifiable metrics to inform modern sustainable design decisions.

Professor Urban says, “With regard to energy consumption, the world has never had so many pharaohs. Not only special buildings like the Seagram, but even our most mundane buildings use more energy than the most extraordinary structures of the ancient world.”

As architects and policymakers search for solutions to the climate emergency, “Form Follows Fuel” challenges assumptions about sustainability always meaning technological advancement, and provides an alternative approach to low-carbon architecture.

“The historical conditions of life without fossil fuels often look like poverty to those living in today’s energy-rich societies,” the authors explain, “but while luxuries were sparse and ill-distributed, materials local, and technologies comparatively simple for most non-fossil-fuel buildings, they had one immense advantage at a global scale: they collectively used resources at a rate within the bounds of what the planetary ecosystem could sustain.”

In an increasingly divided world, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that artificial intelligence is a hugely disruptive—and sometimes downright destructive—phenomenon.

At WIRED’s AI Power Summit in New York on Monday, leaders from the worlds of tech, politics, and the media came together to discuss how AI is transforming their intertwined worlds. The Summit included voices from the AI industry, a current US senator and a former Trump administration official, and publishers including WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast. You can view a livestream of the event in full below.

“In journalism, many of us have been excited and worried about AI in equal measure,” said Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer and the global editorial director of Vogue, in her opening remarks. “We worry about it replacing our work, and the work of those we write about.”

Leaders from the world of politics offered contrasting visions for ensuring AI has a positive impact overall. Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, said policymakers should learn from social media and figure out suitable guardrails around copyright infringement and other key issues before AI causes too much damage. “We want to deal with the perfect storm that is engulfing journalism,” he said in conversation with WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond.

In a separate conversation, Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and one of the authors of the Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan, defended that policy blueprint’s vision for AI regulation. He claimed that it introduced more rules around AI risks than any other government has produced.

Figures from within the AI industry painted a rosy picture of AI’s impact, too, arguing that it will be a boon for economic growth and would not be deployed unchecked.

One of the most prestigious honors we award products is inclusion on our Buy It for Life gear roundup. This list represents products that WIRED writers have personally used for years, and as the name implies, they should last you for the rest of your life with proper care and warranty support. There’s only one coffee maker on that list, the Moccamaster KBGV Select, and you can currently pick it up from Amazon for up to $40 off its list price, depending on the color.

These drip coffee makers are seriously built to last, handmade in the Netherlands with solid steel and copper components. They’re fully repairable, which means they’ll keep churning out hot mugs of perfect coffee even after the five-year warranty ends. There are a variety of models, but we like the KBGV Select because it can also brew a half carafe instead of a full carafe, a useful trick for smaller households or an afternoon energy burst.

Extremely precise temperature control means you get excellent coffee every time, managing to consistently heat within a range of 4 degree Celsius. Technivorm is one of less than a dozen companies producing SCA-certified coffee makers for home use, and the Moccamaster models take up a noticeable chunk of that list.

It has all the features you’d expect from a drip coffee maker, like a hot plate for the carafe that has an automatic shut off, which automatically adjusts temperature based on whether you brewed a full or half carafe. The reservoir is 1.25 liters, so you can brew up to 10 cups of coffee at once, and it takes just four to six minutes from start to finish.

This model is available in a huge variety of colors, and your discount will vary based on which you think will match your kitchen best. I found the best price of $317 on the Turquoise, with the Apricot and Matte Black right behind at $320, as well as lesser discounts on the Off-White, Polished silver, and Juniper varieties. While we think it’s worth spending the extra cash for something that will last you years to come, you can always peruse our other favorite coffee makers if you’re looking for something more wallet-friendly.