‘ Made possible by coal ’: warehouses beneath Liverpool docks and the world ’ s first intercity railway , between Liverpool and Manchester , 1832 - 33 . Photograph : Heritage Images / Getty Images Barnabas Calder ’ s engaging study of construction and its environmental impact is at its best when it doesn ’ t dwell on ancient masterpieces Rowan MooreThe GuardianMon 24 May 2021 Consider the Georgian terrace , now a widely admired model of traditional city - building . Its most important material was not those of which it was ostensibly made , but coal : coal fired the kilns that made the bricks and the lime for the mortar ; it helped make the glass for the large windows ; it smelted and melted the iron for the railings and nails . It was burned in the fireplaces whose serried chimneys rose above the roofline , and was stored in the coal holes beneath the pavement , which were studded with the circular metal plates through which the fuel was poured . Without coal , these houses would have required impossible acreages of forest to supply the timber to generate the heat to manufacture these products . From the mid - 18 th to the mid - 19 th century , reports Barnabas Calder , pig iron production in Britain rose by a factor of about 65 , which without coal would have required an area of woodland almost the size of England . Coal would power the factories that would concentrate production and wealth in ways that would change cities . It would feed the railways that would allow people to live further from their work , in suburbs , and would enable food to be brought from distant locations . It would uncouple cities from the agricultural land needed to sustain them . It would also allow architects to play with building materials from distant locations and with an array of new techniques . The gaudy Victorian facade of the former Midland Grand hotel in front of St Pancras station in London , for example , was a built advertisement for the bricks and stones that the railway company could bring from the Midlands to London . This is partly a hymn or elegy to the world that fossil fuels made , partly a warning of the disasters they are bringing Architecture : From Prehistory to Climate Emergency sets out to tell the history of architecture as one of energy use . It ’ s a great idea for a book , cutting through art historical arcana of styles and movements with practical explanations . It has something of the appeal of Jared Diamond ’ s Guns , Germs and Steel – that of grounding historical mysteries in material facts . For most of history , as described in the first half of the book , energy was mostly human and animal labour , and the food that had to be found or grown to fuel it . Most hunter - gatherer societies demanded economy in construction – a day spent building is a day not finding food – so they tended to use the materials closest to hand . Hence the shelters built of bones and tusks by mammoth hunters in what is now Ukraine and Russia . Then agriculture brought the possibility of surplus , plus the buildings needed to store and manage grain . With agriculture and surplus came hierarchic societies , whose rulers might find themselves in command of colossal resources of food and labour , which enabled them to build such vast redundancies as the pyramids of the Egyptian pharaohs . Such works may even have had the useful aspect , from the rulers ’ point of view , of employing bodies that would otherwise have been dangerously idle . Later , after Anthony and Cleopatra were defeated by the future Emperor Augustus , ancient Rome took control of Egypt ’ s grain supplies , which helped it finance its own huge monuments . Even then , there was some carefulness with resources . The Romans used timber sparingly , it being a land - hungry material needed for other essentials such as shipbuilding , choosing instead the masonry construction that exploited the abundant labour they had at their disposal . Similar stories played out with other societies where the accumulation of agricultural wealth allowed it , and where there was sufficient stability and continuity of government to enable construction skills to develop over generations . Medieval cathedrals came about in this way , and the tile - clad wonders of 17 th - century Isfahan . Then coal changed everything . Later , oil changed things some more . Cities could expand exponentially , and building types could develop in new ways – railway stations , factories , office blocks , coal and cotton exchanges , mass housing , skyscrapers , shopping malls , airports . Electricity could free building interiors from their dependence on natural light , and eventually , air conditioning would equalise climate around the world . Concrete and steel – both energy - intensive materials – made possible unprecedented efficiencies and scales , as well as breathtaking feats of engineering and new ways of shaping architectural space . All of which , we now know , came with a huge price : the potential devastation of the planet through climate change . Calder ’ s book is partly a hymn or elegy to the world that fossil fuels made , partly a warning of the disasters they are bringing . It is strongest in its descriptions of the growth of industrial Liverpool , the city in whose university the author works . It tells of the docks , warehouses , pubs , housing and education buildings made possible by coal . Also of the aesthetics of the new industrial wealth , both embracing new technology and harking back to the styles of great buildings of the past . It describes a beautiful Lake District house which , despite its architect ’ s dedication to traditional arts and crafts , was reliant on the money his client made selling beer from coal - powered breweries to workers in coal - powered factories , as well as on the coal - powered trains with which he could get to this idyllic spot . I ’ m baffled by the book ’ s title , which fails to encapsulate its great idea of explaining buildings through energy . And Architecture : From Prehistory to Climate Emergency gets too bogged down in ancient masterpieces , sounding in places like a dutiful schoolbook history of architecture , which leaves it too little space to expand on the ways in which attempts to be sustainable are now changing construction . It ’ s sketchy here , seeing hope mostly in the admirable but tiny Cork House , recently built in the town of Eton . But these glitches shouldn ’ t obscure the fact that Calder makes a simple and important point , often with engaging and unexpected detail : architecture is indeed made by energy , which makes crucial the next stage of its evolution .