Book picks similar to
The Handbook of Design for Sustainability by Stuart Walker
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For an Architecture of Reality
Michael Benedikt - 1988
For an Architecture of Reality published in the year 1992. The author of this book is Michael Benedikt . We have a dedicated page displaying collection of Michael Benedikt books here. This is the Paperback version of the title "For an Architecture of Reality ". For an Architecture of Reality is currently Available with us.
The Jewel Garden: A Story of Despair and Redemption
Montagu Don - 2004
At the same time THE JEWEL GARDEN is the story of a creative partnership that has weathered the greatest storm, and a testament to the healing powers of the soil. In his weekly column for the Observer, Monty Don has always been candid about the garden's role in helping him to pull back from the abyss of depression; THE JEWEL GARDEN elaborates on this much further. Written in an optimistic, autobiographical vein, Monty and Sarah's story is truly an exploration of what it means to be a gardener.
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Charles Montgomery - 2012
Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and condo towers an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience and Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how our cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world--and all of us can help build it.
The Future of Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright - 1953
Dirt-Cheap Survival Retreat: One Man's Solution
M.D. Creekmore - 2011
But how many of us can afford such a spread without a crippling mortgage? If you can't make the hefty payments on your survival retreat, the bankers will evict you, leaving you worse off than those who failed to prepare in the first place. M.D. Creekmore's motivation for finding a low-cost retreat was the need to live on a lot less money after he lost his job and got divorced. He started living in a travel trailer, parked on two acres he'd bought a few years back to use as a campsite and bug-out location, never dreaming he'd be living there full time. But he has called his trailer home for the past four years and says that "for the first time in my life, I'm actually content." Living off the grid in a travel trailer isn't for everyone. But if you are looking for a way to own a debt-free home--and enjoy the security that comes with it--here's the author's dirt-cheap plan for finding suitable land; buying a used trailer; securing it against the elements and intruders; providing alternative power sources; dealing with water and waste issues; maximizing your space; and establishing a workable storage system for food, water, medicine, tools, and other equipment. The good news is that the author has done the hard part for you.
The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age
David Biello - 2016
These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have. What is the threat? It is us. In a time when a species dies out every ten minutes, when summers are getting hotter, winters colder, and oceans higher, some people still deny mankind’s effect on the Earth. But all of our impacts on the planet have ushered in what qualifies as a new geologic epoch, thanks to global warming, mass extinction, and such technologies as nuclear weapons and plastics. “A futurist ray of hope amid the usual denial and despair” (Esquire), The Unnatural World examines the world we have created and analyzes the glimmers of light emerging from the efforts of incredible individuals seeking to change our future. Instead of a world without us, this history of the future shows how to become good gardeners, helping people thrive along with an abundance of plants, animals, all the exuberant profusion of life on Earth—a better world with us. The current era of humans need not be the end of the world—and “Biello describes both what we have done to alter our planet and what we should do in the future to ensure its habitability” (Scientific American).
The Urban Sketching Handbook Architecture and Cityscapes: Tips and Techniques for Drawing on Location
Gabriel Campanario - 2014
Now, he drills down into specific challenges of making sketches on location, rain or shine, quickly or slowly, and the most suitable techniques for every situation, in The Urban Sketching Handbook series. It's easy to overlook that ample variety of buildings and spaces and the differences from city to city, country to country. From houses, apartments and shopping malls to public buildings and places of worship, the structures humans have created over the centuries, for shelter, commerce, industry, transportation or recreation, are fascinating subjects to study and sketch.In The Urban Sketching Handbook: Architecture and Cityscapes, Gabriel lays out keys to help make the experience of drawing architecture and cityscapes fun and rewarding. Using composition, depth, scale, contrast, line and creativity, sketching out buildings and structure has never been more inspirational. This guide will help you to develop your own creative approach, no matter what your skill level may be today. As much as The Urban Sketching Handbook: Architecture and Cityscapes may inspire you to draw more urban spaces, it can also help to increase your appreciation of the built environment. Drawing the places where we live, work and play, is a great way to show appreciation and creativity.
The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19
Tim Flannery - 2020
Although Australia’s prompt, science-led response to COVID-19 has not been perfect, it has saved tens of thousands of lives. But for decades, governments have ignored, ridiculed or understated the advice of scientists on the climate emergency.Now, in the wake of the megafires of 2020, a time of reckoning has arrived. In The Climate Cure renowned climate scientist Tim Flannery takes aim at those responsible for the campaign of obfuscation and denial that has already cost so many Australian lives and held back action on climate change.Flannery demands a new approach, based on the nation’s response to COVID-19, that will lead to effective government policies. The Climate Cure is an action plan for our future. We face a fork in the road, and must decide now between catastrophe and survival.
Natural Capitalism
Paul Hawken - 1999
This groundbreaking book reveals how today's global businesses can be both environmentally responsible and highly profitable.
Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution
Menno Schilthuizen - 2018
In Darwin Comes to Town, evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen shows that evolution can in fact happen extremely quickly, and in the strangest of places: the heart of the city.Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating the evolution of the animals and plants around us. Cities are extreme environments and, in a world of adapt or die, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is being forced to adopt fascinating new ways of surviving, and often thriving.--Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts.--Spiders in Vienna are adapting to build their webs near moth-attracting streetlights, while moths in some cities are developing a resistance to the lure of light bulbs.--Certain Puerto Rican city lizards are evolving feet that better grip surfaces like concrete.--Europe’s urban blackbirds sing at a higher pitch than their rural cousins, to be heard over the din of traffic, while many pigeons have eschewed traveling “as the crow flies” in favor of following manmade roads.Darwin Comes to Town draws on these and other eye-popping examples to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward overpopulation might not take the rest of nature down with us.
Solar Power Your Home for Dummies
Rik DeGunther - 2007
You'll see how to survey your home to determine your current household energy efficiency and use, and evaluate where solar power would best benefit you. You'll also calculate what the return on your investment will be before you make any decisions. Once you've decided on a project, you'll see whether it's best to hire a contractor or do it yourself. We leave no stone unturned--you'll also discover how to:Choose and install your best solar system Handle small to large solar projects Heat and cool your house with solar energy Install exterior solar lighting Handle swimming pool, water heater, or ventilation solar projects Create greenhouses or solar rooms Build, buy, or sell a solar home Finance your solar investments Take advantage of tax rebates and incentives associated with solar power Avoid the worst solar mistakes Featuring ten of the easiest and cheapest do-it-yourself solar projects, Solar Power For Dummies is the fun and easy way to meet your energy needs with this clean power source!
Restore. Recycle. Repurpose.: Create a Beautiful Home
Randy Florke - 2010
Florke clearly explains why going green is so important, how to use what’s already there, find a focus for every space, and determine what makes something environmentally friendly.Anyone hoping to transform a home from ordinary to extraordinary will find eco-friendly, thrifty, and stylish ideas. With its emphasis on simplicity, thrift, and respect for historical integrity, Randy Florke calls his philosophy the "anti-keeping up with the Joneses.” Comfort, style, and economy are the bellwether elements of his approach to decorating.
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher W. Alexander - 1977
It will enable making a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. ‘Patterns,’ the units of this language, are answers to design problems: how high should a window sill be?; how many stories should a building have?; how much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?More than 250 of the patterns in this language are outlined, each consisting of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely that they will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five hundred years as they are today.A Pattern Language is related to Alexander’s other works in the Center for Environmental Structure series: The Timeless Way of Building (introductory volume) and The Oregon Experiment.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
Ernst F. Schumacher - 1973
Schumacher's riveting, richly researched statement on sustainability has become more relevant and vital with each year since its initial groundbreaking publication during the 1973 energy crisis. A landmark statement against "bigger is better" industrialism, Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful paved the way for twenty-first century books on environmentalism and economics, like Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty, Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism, Mohammad Yunis's Banker to the Poor, and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy. This timely reissue offers a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalization.
The Little Book of Living Small
Laura Fenton - 2020
It features twelve case study homes in which style-savvy, small-space dwellers (from singles to families of four) open their doors and share their design secrets. Stylistically these homes range from urban to rural, minimalist to bohemian, with the unifying thread that they are all real homes of 1,200 square feet or less and offer clever solutions for you to use in your own home.Highly engaging with lists, tips, and actionable advice, The Little Book of Living Small shows readers how to make the most of limited square footage—with grace and style—and serves as the cheerleader readers need to help themselves feel satisfied and proud of their choice to live with less.Laura Fenton is the author of The Little Book of Living Small and the former lifestyle director at Parents magazine, where she oversaw all the home content for the publication. A writer with more than fifteen years of experience, her work has appeared in major publications including Better Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and on leading home websites including Remodelista, HGTV.com, ElleDecor.com, Curbed, and Refinery29. Through her writing she has explored the topic of living small for more than a decade. She lives small with her husband, a photographer, and their son in Jackson Heights, Queens, in New York.