Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home Author: Stefan AlISBN-13: 978-1-324-06572-2 Publisher: W. W. Norton Guideline Price: $31.99In Dwelling on Earth, Stefan Al traces human dwelling spaces through four major periods – the agriculture revolution, the urban and industrial revolutions, and our present-day climate crisis. Beginning with a compact tour of archaeological and anthropological discoveries, Al guides his readers around some of the oldest known human living spaces, all of which existed before “our hominin ancestors began experimenting with something surprisingly revolutionary–permanence.” One key moment in the prehistory is the first housing at Kalambo Falls, Zambia, 476,000 years ago, which had interlocking timbers and came before fire had even been discovered. Leaving the Paleolithic period, we move onto the more substantive Neolithic Period or as Al titles it “Cities of Mud”. We see pit homes and rectilinear homes; fired bricks and the mystical city of Ur. At this point, more heady themes arise: “Writing, monumental architecture, specialized labor, political organizations, dense populations.” Next is ancient Greece and Rome, where we learn about building codes (after the great fire of 64 AD, Nero mandated building codes with height caps), economies of scale, water and public transportation systems, industrial brick and cement making, the domus, the atrium, insulae, terraces, door knockers, hotels and apartment buildings. In the fourth chapter, The Industrial Home, Al, who grew up in the Netherlands, focuses primarily on Amsterdam during the late Renaissance and the homes and life built along the canals. The Netherlands introduced a new era in living: “The transition from communal feudal households to private single-family homes”, not to mention the “stylistic fronts with distinctive features, like the stepped, bell, and spout gable along with the unique neck gable”. From there the elevator takes us up to the world of Machines for Living. Vertical neighborhoods. The Frankfurt Kitchen. Tombstone Urbanism. Bauhaus Modernism. Brutalism. Levittown! In the two final chapters we enter into a realm of near science fiction: 3D homes, thinking houses, biophilic designs, woonerfs (living streets), schoonschips (floating homes) and floating cities, all built in an effort to reconcile human habitation with the present-day exigencies of sea-level rise, pollution, over-population, resource depletion and climate change. Dwelling on Earth offers a spirited rendering of human living spaces through the ages, and Al conscientiously illustrates not only how and why our ingenious forebears built their homes, towns and cities, but he also reminds us how and why their improvident nature wrought persistent failures along the way. As he reasons: “The walls they built reshaped not only their physical and mental world but also their relationship with nature. The problems they faced, from resource depletion to environmental degradation, echo those we struggle with today.”Richard Horan is an award-winning writer