In The Air from Other Planets, Sean Lally introduces the reader to an architecture produced by designing the energy within our environment ( electromagnetic, thermodynamic, acoustic, and chemical ). This architecture exchanges the walls and shells we have assumed to be the only type of attainable architecture for a range of material energies that develops its own shapes, aesthetics, organizational systems, and social experiences. The book is a story in which energy emerges as more than what fills the interior of a building or reflects off its outer walls. Instead, energy becomes its own enterprise for design innovation: it becomes the architecture itself.
The Air from Other Planets is a book nostalgic for the future, rooted in the belief that the architect's greatest attributes lie not only in harnessing the latest technologies and advancements in building materials, but also in exercising our imaginations through speculation and the projections of worlds and environments yet to exist. The book shows us that some of our greatest discoveries come not from seeking something new but from re-examining what we already have around us.
