Originally, technologies of climate-control, such as air conditioning, were promoted through the paradigm of thermal comfort, promising greater vitality and well-being. Today, in the face of climate collapse, they have become life-sustaining systems that, in many regions, secure nothing less than habitability and livability. As access to cooled spaces and refrigeration becomes increasingly unequal and contested, the question of how to sustain—or manufacture—resilient well-tempered environments has become critical.
Within such imaginaries of a future cryosphere, one techno-spatial arrangement stands out: the climate dome. Combining the long history of dome architecture with the modern project of creating enclosed atmospheres, climate domes exemplify the contemporary ideal of thermal urbanism. As I will argue, they articulate specific – and highly contradictory – relations between inside and outside, environment and technology, as well as life and death.