Air-Conditioning Is Crucial to Modern Life

Ed Bosco, a LEED accredited professional engineer, is the managing principal of the New York office of ME Engineers.

Air-conditioning is a necessary luxury. For thousands of years before the invention of air-conditioning in 1902, humans survived high heat and humidity by constructing protective shelters and limiting their activity during the hottest times of the year. Air-conditioning puts us in control of our comfort and frees us from the discomfort, risk and uncertainty of the weather.

Without air-conditioning, we would have to live and work differently: no data centers or Internet, no big office buildings, no preseason football in Arizona.

The availability of air-conditioning allows architects to consider building geometries that were not possible when it was critical that everyone be seated near a window. This allows larger floor plates that encourage collaboration and permit the high densities of our modern cities.

Air-conditioning makes it possible to construct the data centers that power commerce, the Internet and research. Without air-conditioning, we would lose our ability to work and communicate as a modern society.

Air-conditioning makes it possible to comfortably assemble in large groups. Over the past 30 years, the proliferation of sports venues with fixed or operable roofs has changed the way we experience sports and allowed the expansion of professional sports into warmer regions. The Phoenix Cardinals now have an air-conditioned retractable-roof stadium, an indoor oasis that can be cooled below 80 degrees in a climate where the temperatures can exceed 100 degrees. This allowed the team to host preseason and opening weekend home games for the first time since moving to Arizona in 1988.

Engineers are now working on designs that will make it possible for crowds of more than 80,000 people to experience spectator sports in the hot desert sands of the Middle East. Operable roofs make public assembly buildings sustainable by allowing the use of low-energy natural ventilation when possible and higher-energy air-conditioning only when necessary.

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