Buildings can make us sick or keep us well. Diseases and toxins course through indoor spaces, making us ill. Meanwhile, better air quality and light levels improve productivity. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has us focused more than ever on indoor air quality, Healthy Buildings shows how much we have to gain from human-centered design.
Your building has the potential to change the world. Existing buildings consume approximately 40 percent of the energy and emit nearly half of the carbon dioxide in the US each year. In recognition of the significant contribution of buildings to climate change, the idea of building green has become increasingly popular. But is it enough? If an energy-efficient building is new construction, it may take 10 to 80 years to overcome the climate change impacts of the building process. New buildings are sexy, but few realize the value in existing buildings and how easy it is to get to “zero energy” or low-energy consumption through deep energy retrofits. Existing buildings can and should be retrofit to reduce environmental impacts that contribute to climate change, while improving human health and productivity for building occupants. In The Power of Existing Buildings, academic sustainability expert Robert Sroufe, and construction and building experts Craig Stevenson and Beth Eckenrode, explain how to realize the potential of existing buildings and make them perform like new. This step-by-step guide will help readers to: understand where to start a project; develop financial models and realize costs savings; assemble an expert team; and align goals with numerous sustainability programs. The Power of Existing Buildings will challenge you to rethink spaces where people work and play, while determining how existing buildings can save the world. The insights and practical experience of Sroufe, Stevenson, and Eckenrode, along with the project case study examples, provide new insights on investing in existing buildings for building owners, engineers, occupants, architects, and real estate and construction professionals. The Power of Existing Buildings helps decision-makers move beyond incremental changes to holistic, results-oriented solutions.
A captivating exploration of the ever-evolving world of architecture and the untold stories buildings tell. When a building is finished being built, that isn’t the end of its story. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they’re allowed to. Buildings adapt by being constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and in that way, architects can become artists of time rather than simply artists of space. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei’s Media Lab, from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory. Discover how structures become living organisms, shaped by the people who inhabit them, and learn how architects can harness the power of time to create enduring works of art through the interconnected worlds of design, function, and human ingenuity.
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make 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 pattern language are given: each consists 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 seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.
As the ever-changing skylines of cities all over the world show, tall buildings are an increasingly important solution to accommodating growth more sustainably in today’s urban areas. Whether it is residential, a workplace or mixed use, the tower is both a statement of intent and the defining image for the new global city. The Tall Buildings Reference Book addresses all the issues of building tall, from the procurement stage through the design and construction process to new technologies and the building’s contribution to the urban habitat. A case study section highlights the latest, the most innovative, the greenest and the most inspirational tall buildings being constructed today. A team of over fifty experts in all aspects of building tall have contributed to the making of the Tall Buildings Reference Book, creating an unparalleled source of information and inspiration for architects, engineers and developers.
The definitive guide to understanding and managing the effects of water on buildings Water in Buildings: An Architect's Guide to Moisture and Mold is a detailed and highly useful reference to help architects and other design professionals create dry, healthy environments, without jeopardizing a project with poor liability management. Much more than a book of "quick fixes," this practical guide illuminates an essential understanding of the "whys" of moisture problems, including valuable information on how water behaves and how its performance can be anticipated and managed in building design. With a special emphasis on water's role in creating mold, an issue of growing concern and liability, Water in Buildings offers the most up-to-date information on rainwater management, below-grade water management, foundations, wall and roof construction, mechanical systems, moisture, and much more! Providing authoritative guidance to designers and builders, this definitive guide features: * Clear explanations of how water interacts with building materials and equipment * An in-depth exploration of the paths of leaks * Numerous case studies on such well-known structures as Mount Vernon, Independence Hall, and Wingspan (Frank Lloyd Wright) * Numerous descriptive drawings and photographs
For years I have heard about buildings and their applications to group theory. I finally decided to try to learn something about the subject by teaching a graduate course on it at Cornell University in Spring 1987. This book is based on the not es from that course. The course started from scratch and proceeded at a leisurely pace. The book therefore does not get very far. Indeed, the definition of the term "building" doesn't even appear until Chapter IV. My hope, however, is that the book gets far enough to enable the reader to tadle the literat ure on buildings, some of which can seem very forbidding. Most of the results in this book are due to J. Tits, who originated the the ory of buildings. The main exceptions are Chapter I (which presents some classical material), Chapter VI (which prcsents joint work of F. Bruhat and Tits), and Chapter VII (which surveys some applications, due to var ious people). It has been a pleasure studying Tits's work; I only hope my exposition does it justice.
This unique volume showcases the best illustrated architecture books ever published. The author, John Hill, is the founder of the hugely influential architecture blog A Daily Dose of Architecture, which recently shifted course to focus entirely on architecture books of all kinds. His selection for this volume spans centuries, continents, and genres to include Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture, Project Japan by Rem Koolhaas, Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction by Keith Krumwiede, X-Ray Architecture by Beatriz Colomina and Thomas Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House. The books selected are organized into the categories of Manifestos, Histories, Education, Housing, Monographs, Buildings, Exhibitions, Building Cities, and Critiques, and each one has a reproduction of the book's cover along with selected spreads which are accompanied by Hill's informed, personal, and engaging take on what makes the title unique and indispensable. In addition, sidebar "Top 10" lists from many of today's leading critics and architects are scattered throughout. Capturing the best of Hill's insightful and curious mind, this invaluable resource will broaden the world of anyone interested in the field of architecture-- and provide irrefutable arguments for these works' continued relevance.
In this eagerly awaited follow-up to the international bestseller Fantastic Cities, artist Steve McDonald uses his unique large-format approach working from actual photographs to create beautifully detailed line drawings of amazing buildings and other structures from around the world. The globe-trotting selection includes buildings from six continents—including Prague's Astronomical Clock, Russia's St. Basil's Cathedral, a Florentine bridge, a Romanian castle, an Indian palace, and many dozens more—alongside fun-to-color details from iconic structures such as the Eiffel Tower, London's Tower Bridge, and the Chrysler Building. The crisp white pages are conducive to a range of applications, and a middle margin keeps all the artwork fully colorable. A dozen imaginative architectural mandala illustrations round out this gorgeous adult coloring book.
The Language of Disenchantment explores how Protestant ideas about language influenced British colonial attitudes toward Hinduism and proposals for the reform of that tradition. Protestant literalism, mediated by a new textual economy of the printed book, inspired colonial critiques of Indian mythological, ritual, linguistic, and legal traditions. Central to these developments was the transposition of the Christian opposition between monotheism and polytheism or idolatry into the domain of language. Polemics against verbal idolatry - including the elevation of a scriptural canon over heathenish custom, the attack on the personifications of mythological language, and the critique of "vain repetitions" in prayers and magic spells - previously applied to Catholic and sectarian practices in Britain were now applied by colonialists to Indian linguistic practices. As a remedy for these diseases of language, the British attempted to standardize and codify Hindu traditions as a step toward both Anglicization and Christianization. The colonial understanding of a perfect language as the fulfillment of the monotheistic ideal echoed earlier Christian myths according to which the Gospel had replaced the obscure discourses of pagan oracles and Jewish ritual. By recovering the historical roots of the British re-ordering of South Asian discourses in Protestantism, Yelle challenges representations of colonialism, and of the modernity that it ushered in, as simply rational or secular.