Introduction: That's Hot!

Heat is elusive: always on the move, always fugitive. As the transference of energy from one system to another, heat radiates and penetrates. Immanent and intense, heat binds and nourishes as much as it reshapes and destroys. Since heat helps us navigate the material world as tool, medium, and affect, a serious consideration of heat requires us to come to terms with the fragility of the systems in which we take part—both voluntarily and involuntarily. And though temperature is regularly mapped across graphs and thermometers, the feeling of heat is often so localized and so personal that it evades historic perception altogether. Heat's ubiquity and evasiveness force us to confront and map heat's location within art and architecture.