For the January issue of Architectural Record, themed around health and wellness, Russell Fortmeyer reviews Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings by Tim Altenhof. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“In Altenhof’s view, respiratory modernism represents the emergence of a new architecture that centers on the breathing human not as a passive occupant but as a physiological actor within extensive atmospheric systems, at the urban or even planetary scale. He returns often to Le Corbusier’s fascination with representing human lungs in relation to buildings and cities to reinforce this view of our bodies as seamlessly connected to the natural world and the way architecture shapes exchange between the two.

While many recent books have functioned as correctives to modern architecture’s embrace of problematic technologies—for instance, air-conditioning as a cause of and solution to global warming—Altenhof has given us an excellent history lesson that carves out a small place for breathing. It is not a book specifically about technology or a comprehensive survey of ventilation and human health. Altenhof tells the origin story of this subject in Western thought, with language for describing what it means to breathe within architectural space. Sorry to put it this way, but it’s a breath of fresh air.”