Water, Centrala p.64

Over the last year, I have been always more aware of the weather as an aspect of architecture – as an abstract concept that features in concerns around climate change, usually catastrophic, apocalyptic even, that creates a sense of dread without a way of escaping it, but also as a lived phenomenon, very personal and affecting.

Having lived two summers and three winters in an environment new to me, in a mountain valley in the heart of Europe after many years in a tower at the centre of London, the weather is something that is easy to notice and I feed my heightened awareness through the imagining that reading enables. Some of the texts in this collection come from this, others were already in the women writing architecture list, while the work of others around this theme  – especially Polish architects Centrala – is also represented.

Always, the weather is beyond our sphere of influence. We can only observe and experience it, the power that we have is to be aware of it and to modify our environments in relation to it – as, perhaps, architecture.