Air Conditioning

Air Conditioning belongs to the Object Lessons series, a set of compact, handsomely designed volumes that look closely at everyday things and the stories they carry beneath the surface. Its subject is a device built to fade into the background. Yet by controlling the air around us, air conditioning sets the baseline for how we feel physically, mentally, and emotionally. Offices, reading rooms, contemporary art museums, and shopping malls all depend on climate control to sustain the idea of a comfortable, self-sufficient body that never has to deal with temperature.

As cooling makes temperature almost irrelevant for some people, thermoception, the body's sense of heat and cold, is being studied closely and put to work in marketing, social control, and the management of labor. The technology's dependence on carbon-based fuels also splits the world into climate-controlled enclosures and increasingly unlivable places where cooling is unavailable.

Hsuan L. Hsu uses the history of climate control and the uneven way it has been distributed to examine questions of culture, ethics, ecology, and social justice. The book was published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.