Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home - Hardcover

by Stefan Al (Author)

Americans spend, on average, 90 percent of their lives indoors, with two-thirds of that time spent in their homes. Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-planning scholar Stefan Al deftly weaves together archaeology, engineering, social history, and environmental science to explain how our homes have developed through the ages and in turn shaped civilization and the planet itself.

From tiny pit-houses in the Levant and Mesoamerica thousands of years ago to soaring skyscrapers in Dubai, New York, and Shanghai today, Dwelling on Earth takes readers on a swift and absorbing tour of the evolution of human habitation. Whisking readers from ancient Pompeii to contemporary Hong Kong, industrial-age Liverpool to postwar Levittown, Al shows how our choices in housing have both reflected and affected ideas about gender roles, privacy, and comfort. Discover how seemingly mundane elements--like door-knockers and corridors--have altered everyday interactions, and how material choices have remade the planet's surface. He also confronts the darker side of domesticity, exposing the unintended consequences of our architectural choices across millennia, including smoke-filled Neolithic dwellings, deadly fires in crowded Roman apartment buildings, and worsening social isolation in car-dependent suburbs. Finally, he examines the myths and reality of future housing, including 3D-printed homes and space architecture built by robots.

Drawing from personal experiences across global cities and professional insights, Al illuminates how our choices in housing continue to influence everything from social relationships to climate change, ultimately arguing that understanding this rich history is crucial for building a more sustainable future. With billions more people needing housing in the coming decades, Dwelling on Earth reveals how we might transform humanity's defining challenge into our greatest opportunity.

Back Jacket

Praise for Stefan Al and Supertall

"A thoughtful inquiry into the new generations of skyscrapers. . . . There is a lot of rich history here, well and concisely told."
--Paul Goldberger, New York Times Book Review

"Gripping . . . [Stefan] Al explains these esoteric technical challenges in lucid fashion"
--Anthony Paletta, Wall Street Journal

"Stefan Al turns the jumbled skylines of our biggest cities into a powerful story of human possibility. . . . [T]his astonishing synthesis reveals how skyscrapers have made us who we are and can help us become who we want to be."
--Andrew Blum, best-selling author of Tubes and The Weather Machine

"[A] fascinating and necessary book."
--Gwendolyn Wright, professor of architecture, planning and preservation, Columbia University