It is rare that architecture gets to play a starring role in the convergences between digital media, technology, and artificial weather. Even rarer with an emphasis on East Asia. Yuriko Furuhata’s recent book Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmosphere Control demonstrates the opposite, that the built environment speaks volumes about the emergence of cybernetic models and their influence on the atmosphere as an object of environmental control.
To an architectural historian, it is not unexpected that Cold War ideologies on both sides of the Pacific Ocean gave birth to ideas around climatic media. While there have been plenty of studies devoted to the North American and European contributions to Cold War science, Furuhata’s refreshing approach to the remixing of these disciplines forms a nonlinear genealogy that emphasizes Japanese contributions, taking the reader on several deep-rooted historical journeys. The staging of Expo ’70 in Osaka emerges as a central theme for...