The World’s Greenest Buildings tackles an audacious task. Among the thousands of green buildings out there, which are the best, and how do we know?Authors Jerry Yudelson and Ulf Meyer examined hundreds of the highest-rated large green buildings from around the world and asked their owners to supply one simple thing: actual performance data, to demonstrate their claims to sustainable operations.This pivotal book presents:an overview of the ra...

"A Coming of Wizards" is about finding and moving toward our potential. And it is the thinking from which the whole earthship concept has evolved. Based on Michael Reynolds' experience with four wizards part one calls forth an appropriate state of mind from which to perceive the "Wizard Information." In part two and three Reynolds moves beyond the human condition toward reaching our potential.The Ebook version of this text has been broken up into three parts and for the first time ...

Passive House Details introduces the concepts, principles, and design processes of building ultralow-energy buildings. The objective of this book is to provide design goals, research, analysis, systems, details, and inspiring images of some of the most energy-efficient, carbon-neutral, healthy, and satisfying buildings currently built in the region. Other topics included: heat transfer, moisture management, performance targets, and climatic zones. Illustrated with more than 375 co...

The projects illustrated here exemplify the way contemporary urban planning is moving in practice, and how it is precisely in the effective transformation of cities and landscapes that it is finding the theoretical and practical forms of its action. An urban planning that, as has recently been pointed out, having emancipated itself from the typo-morphological tradition focused on the built, is now coming to embrace the open spaces of the city within the horizon of the landscape, allowing i...

Passivhaus is the fastest growing energy performance standard in the world, with almost 50,000 buildings realised to date. Applicable to both domestic and non-domestic building types, the strength of Passivhaus lies in the simplicity of the concept. As European and global energy directives move ever closer towards Zero (fossil) Energy standards, Passivhaus provides a robust ‘fabric first’ approach from which to make the next step.The Passivhaus Designers Manual is the most...

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of alternative approaches to architectural practice.At a time when many commentators are noting that alternative and richer approaches to architectural practice are required if the profession is to flourish, this book provides multiple examples from across the globe of how this has been achieved and how it might be achieved in the future.Particularly pertinent in the current economic climate, this book offers the reader new ...

Despite policy directives, standards and guidelines, indoor environmental quality is still poor in many cases. The Healthy Indoor Environment, winner of the2016 IDEC Book Award*,* aims to help architects, building engineers and anyone concerned with the wellbeing of building occupants to better understand the effects of spending time in buildings on health and comfort. In three clear parts dedicated to mechanisms, assessment and analysis, the book looks at different indoor stresso...

First published in 1999, this book presents a fresh and diverse set of perspectives representing key directions of research and practice in the field of environmental design research. Leading researchers in various areas of person-environment research, such as privacy, children’s environment, post-occupancy evaluation, environmental cognition, environmental aesthetics, crime prevention, housing and environmental protection and environmental design present what they consider their best work...

A timely and important search for architecture's missing womenFor a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more succes...

Buildings and their associated systems are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the world. The 2030 Challenge aims to produce zero-net energy from new North American construction by 2030 while achieving a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions from existing buildings. With less than 4 percent of commercial and residential structures in the United States and Canada certified by 2015, we seem destined to fall catastrophically short of this target.Reinventing Green Building...

Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short.This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designi...

Adaptable Architecture provides thought-provoking and inquisitive insights into how we can prolong the useful life of buildings by designing them to be more adaptable, and hence create a more sustainable built environment. The book provides a theoretical foundation counterpointed by the experiences and ideas of those involved in the design and use of buildings. It explains many approaches to designing for change, with lessons from history, and case studies including The Cedar Rapi...