This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant supports travel related expenses for a dissertation student collect data that in U.S. archives that will help him complete his Ph.D. in History. The dissertation examines the development of regulatory systems for buildings in the United States between 1890 and 1920 that allowed for the stabilization and control of unpredictable fluctuations in climate and economy. Science, industry, and the state all took part in this process of architectural modernization to fulfill two goals: 1) to understand and control environmental dynamics and 2) to make capitalist production more efficient, predictable and equitable. These goals represented a fundamental shift in how the modern professions of architecture, engineering and management imagined their relationship to society. Rather than accepting existing social conditions, they became agents that could actively take part in American political economy. In order to understand the historical context of such a shift, this dissertation will assemble and interpret archival materials that document the invention of automatic temperature control, the emergence the cold storage system, the design of research laboratories for ecology, and the application of scientific management to the layout and construction of factories. Existing research in the history of modern America has yet to address the interface between nature, economy and architecture that was brought about through the development of regulatory systems. This researcher is uniquely qualified to bring the expertise of architectural training as well as methods for archival research to bear on the essential role that architecture played in the formation and dissemination of the modern concept of regulation. Investigating how the concept of regulation derived its meaning from emerging scientific research, technological innovation as well as new approaches to management, will begin to shed light on how these discourses entered into the very definition of what was modern in architecture. This historical perspective illustrates the explicit connection between the environment, the economy and architecture that still exists for contemporary designers involved in imagining our future habitat. Concerns about how buildings affect the environment have increasingly entered into the educational curriculum of most professional programs in architecture. However, teaching the historical component of this issue has not yet become a part of the pedagogy associated with the emerging green building movement. By bringing together the histories of science, technology and business, this dissertation can offer a historical and critical outlook on the relationship between architecture and the environment that will examine the changes in social conditions that have arisen from past attempts to regulate environmental instabilities for industry, speculation and the public interest.
