It's full of sage advice from a master architect about how to design the perfect house for you.Presented in twelve understandable lessons, this book moves from wonderful concepts to a finished dream home. Beginning with an exploration of the philosophy of design, the grammar of architecture, the creation of space, and discussions of how to make spaces be appropriate and gratifying for the people living in them, the lessons explore issues of scale, daylight, how to make a house feel like a home, unifying a design, flow, and proportions.This book answers questions like: How do I get started? How do I select a building site? What kind of house can I afford with my budget? How do I make my dream house just right for me?Other topics include: site analysis and selection, programming, schematic design, style, room relationships, budget, working with professionals, methods of contracting, and more.Numerous color photos and drawings illustrate the book's major points

    We have to do something now--but what? Saul Griffith has a plan. In Electrify, Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint--optimistic but feasible--for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith's plan can be summed up simply: electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible. Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and fight for the future.Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-fueled world, mobilize industry as we did in World War II, and offer low-interest "climate loans." Griffith's plan doesn't rely on big, not-yet-invented innovations, but on thousands of little inventions and cost reductions. We can still have our cars and our houses--but the cars will be electric and solar panels will cover our roofs. For a world trying to bounce back from a pandemic and economic crisis, there is no other project that would create as many jobs--up to twenty-five million, according to one economic analysis. Is this politically possible? We can change politics along with everything else.

    This groundbreaking book reveals how today's global businesses can be both environmentally responsible and highly profitable.

    In entirely new photographs taken especially for this book by two leading architectural photographers under the direction of co-editor David Larkin, such internationally famous buildings as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater and Wright's homes Taliesin, Taliesin West, and the Oak Park Home and Studio are seen afresh, benefiting from the photographers' special access. Several lesser-known residences, such as Auldbrass Plantation in South Carolina, an array of wooden buildings that is Wright's American alternative to antebellum architecture, the William H. Winslow house in River Forest, Illinois, one of the architect's earliest and most surprisingly decorative houses, and the Kenneth Laurent house in Rockford, Illinois, a masterful curvilinear design, are seen in full color and demonstrate dimensions of Wright's work less often seen before. Public buildings, such as the dramatic concrete, glass, and steel Marin County Civic Center and Beth Sholom Synagogue show Wright as engineering virtuoso as well as creative architect. In addition to these existing masterworks, only the most famous of which are open to the public, the book covers buildings that have been demolished, notably the Larkin Company Administration Building, Midway Gardens, and the Imperial Hotel, which are represented here by drawings and rich archival photographs. Each of the buildings is presented from conceptual sketch, plan, or drawing to finished masterwork, andeach is accompanied by an in-depth essay detailing the development of the work. Extensive quotes from Wright's writings, unpublished talks, and private letters to the clients give valuable insight into the architect's own thinking about each commission. Never before has Wright's architecture been presented so elaborately in one volume.

    And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.

    Yet residents of compact urban centers, David Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan--the most densely populated place in North America--rank first in public-transit use and last in per-capita greenhouse gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation. These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn't reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with.

    It also contains the easy to follow instructions on how to analyze and compute the structural design of critical building parts such as: reinforced concrete slabs, beams, columns and footings. There are also simple designs and floor plans for a variety of building types to be found in this book.BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION should be of interest to architects, engineers, contractors, developers and allied professionals who are engaged in building design, planning and construction. Students and graduates reviewing for the board examinations for architects and engineers would find in this book valuable practical knowledge to supplement the theories learned in their classrooms.Project owners studying this book would appreciate and get a clear understanding of how their envisioned pet project, which sprang only from a mere idea - is transformed slowly step-by-step - into concrete form.Explanations and instructions in BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION are conveyed in direct and simple language for easy understanding even by the layman. Plans and drawings are clearly presented, to be easily interpreted by construction workers.

    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.

    Back to basics guide to improve your knowledge of and practice of photography.Topics include camera and lens types, lighting, exposure, composition and image editing.

    Following the success of their first book, Architecture for Humanity brings readers the next edition, with more than 100 projects from around the world. Packed with practical and ingenious design solutions, this book addresses the need for basic shelter, housing, education, health care, clean water, and renewable energy. One-on-one interviews and provocative case studies demonstrate how innovative design is reimagining community and uplifting lives. From building-material innovations such as smog-eating concrete to innovative public policy that is repainting Brazil’s urban slums, Design Like You Give a Damn [2] serves as a how-to guide for anyone seeking to build change from the ground up.Praise for Design Like You Give a Damn [2]:<!--StartFragment--> “The resourcefulness of the projects in the book is inspiring, its information practical (see Stohr’s chapter on financing sustainable community development) and its numerous factoids sobering.” —TMagazine.blogs.NYTimes.com

    The discussion moves systematically through ideas, theories, research and practice of urban design from a wide range of sources. It gradually builds the concepts one upon the other towards a total view of the subject.

    

    Written by Arizona t.v. gardening guru, the "Garden Guy," David Owens covers topics including watering, design, tools, schedules, fertilizing, companion planting, and soils.

    Published by Cal-Earth Press in beautiful leather-tooled hardback with photographs from the author's original journey.

    It describes the benefits of sheltering a home with earth, including the added comfort and energy efficiency from the moderating influence of the earth on the home’s temperature (keeping it warm in the winter and cool in the summer), along with the benefits of low maintenance and the protection against fire, sound, earthquake, and storm afforded by the earth. Extra benefits from adding an earth or other living roof option include greater longevity of the roof substrate, fine aesthetics, and environmental harmony.The book covers all of the various construction techniques involved, including details on planning, excavation, footings, floor, walls, framing, roofing, waterproofing, insulation, and drainage. Specific methods appropriate for the inexperienced owner/builder are a particular focus and include:Pouring one’s own footings and/or floor The use of dry-stacked (surface-bonded) concrete block walls Post-and-beam framing Plank-and-beam roofing Drainage methods and self-adhesive waterproofing membranes The time-tested, easy-to-learn construction techniques described in Earth-Sheltered Houses will enable readers to embark upon their own building projects with confidence, backed up by a comprehensive resources section that lists all the latest products such as waterproofing membranes, types of rigid insulation, and drainage products that will protect the building against water damage and heat loss.Rob Roy is a former contractor with 27 years of experience and 12 previous books to his credit, including Cordwood Building and Timber Framing for the Rest of Us. An expert on underground building, he founded the Earthwood Building School in 1981 with his wife, Jaki, and is frequently a speaker at events throughout North America.