A Place in the Sun : The Evolution of the Real Goods Solar Living Center

uthor(s): John Schaeffer, Sim Van Der Ryn

Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co

ISBN: 1890132012

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

A Place in the Sun : The Evolution of the Real Goods Solar Living Center

Paperback, 40 pages
Publication date: September 1997
Ninety miles north of San Francisco, the Real Goods Trading Company constructed a cutting-edge solar living center using building materials, landscaping techniques, and futuristic renewable energy technologies. The center is a working demonstration site for renewable energy and earth-friendly building and landscaping concepts; A Place in the Sun is the exciting and fascinating story of how the people and ideas came together to bring the center from conception to a functioning, tangible reality. The result is an eclectic, visionary complex of buildings and landscaping that functions as a center for education, a retail operation, and an experimental demonstration framework for new technologies. The story of how it came to be is both hopeful and inspiring.

The Self-Build Book: How to Enjoy Designing and Building Your Own Home

Author(s): Jon Broome, Brian Richardson

Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co

ISBN: 1900322005

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

The Self-Build Book: How to Enjoy Designing and Building Your Own Home

Rev & Updated Edition 1998
Paperback, 271 pages
Publication date: March 1996

This revised and updated edition of the guide to the process of building for yourself gives both inspiration and practical information. It relates personal experiences of putting theory into practice; outlines an environmentally friendly approach to design, choice of materials and energy conservation; includes a practical guide to organizing a project which covers land, finance, permissions and professional help; and includes a detailed manual on the Segal Method of timber construction, because of its particular advantage to self-builders. Jon Broome and Brian Richardson are both architects with a great deal of self-build experience.

About the Author

Jon Broome is an architect, who has self-built two houses. He was for many years Director of Architype, a London-based architectural practice working on housing, education, health and community buildings with specialist expertise in low energy design, timber-frame construction and sustainable building. He is co-author of The Self-Build Book and contributor to Housing & the Environment, published by the Chartered Institute of Housing. He lives in London, where he runs his own consultancy specializing in sustainable construction.

Other homes and garbage: Designs for self-sufficient living

Author(s): (unlisted)

Publisher: Sierra Club Books

ISBN: 0871561417

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

This title is out of print.

Try your local library, a used bookstore, or www.abe.com.

Earthship : How to Build Your Own

Author: Michael E. Reynolds

Publisher: Solar Survival Press

ISBN: 0962676705

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

Earthship : How to Build Your Own Volume 1 Paperback Publication date: September 1990

Earthship : Evolution Beyond Economics

Author(s): Mike Reynolds

Publisher: Solar Survival Press

ISBN: 0962676721

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

Earthship : Evolution Beyond Economics Volume 3 Paperback Publication date: September 1993

The Ecology of Architecture: A Complete Guide to Creating the Environmentally Conscious Building

Author(s): Laura C. Zeiher

Publisher: Whitney Library of Design

ISBN: 0823015963

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

The Ecology of Architecture: A Complete Guide to Creating the Environmentally Conscious Building

Hardcover
For architects and designers, this text considers how to design and build ecologically sound structures today that will perform well tomorrow. Residential, commercial, industrial and institutional buildings are included in the case studies.

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Elements of Ecology and Architecture
Ch. 1. A History of Ecology in Architecture
Ch. 2. Defining Environmentally Conscious Architecture: Pioneering American Practitioners
Ch. 3. Renewable Resource Technologies
Ch. 4. The Process: Creating Ecologically Conscious Architecture
Ch. 5. Case Studies: Buildings in North America
Ch. 6. Environmental Legislation: Opportunities and Responsibilities
A Call to Action
Appendix
Notes
Index

Designing With Nature : The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design

Cover, Designing With Nature : The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design Author(s): Ken Yeang

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

ISBN: 0070723176

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

Designing With Nature: The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design

Hardcover, 243 pages
Publication date: May 1995

A timely, incisive book providing a comprehensive framework for designing buildings that work with nature. Offering a compelling case for ecological design, it provides architects and designers with a full understanding of the impact that their work has on the natural environment, as well as what can be done to mitigate the damage man-made structures inflict on the natural environment.

Table of Contents
Preface
1. Ecology and Design
2. Architecture and Its Ecological Impact
3. Framework for Ecological Design
4. External Ecological Interdependencies of the Built Environment
5. Internal Ecological Interdependencies of the Built Environment
6. External-to-Internal Ecological Interdependencies of the Built Environment
7. Internal-to-External Ecological Interdependencies of the Built Environment
8. Ecological Design
References
Index

Deep Design : Pathways to a Livable Future

Author(s): David Wann, Center for Resource Management, Paul Hawken (Introduction)

Publisher: Island Press

ISBN: 1559634200

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

In “Deep Design,” David Wann explores a new way of thinking about design, one that asks “What is our ultimate goal?” before the first step has even been taken. Designs that begin with such a question — whether in products, buildings, technologies, or communities — are sensitive to living systems, and can potentially accomplish their mission without the seemingly unavoidable side effects of pollution, erosion, congestion, and stress. Such “deep designs” meet the key criteria of renewability, recyclability, and nontoxicity. Often based on natural systems, they are easy to understand and implement, and provide more elegant approaches to getting the services and functions we need. Wann presents information gleaned from interviews with more than fifty innovative designers in a wide variety of fields, and describes numerous case studies that explain the concept and practice of deep design.

Hardcover, 230 pages
Publication date: January 1996

Table of Contents
Foreword By Paul Hawken
Preface
Ch. 1. Deep Design: From the Visionary to the Pragmatic
Ch. 2. The Social-Environmental Connection: What Do We Want, and How Can Design Deliver It?
Ch. 3. Design at the Molecular Level: Pathways to Chemicals That Fit
Ch. 4. In Search of the Soft Path: Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Ch. 5. Re-envisioning Agriculture: Pathways to Regenerative Systems
Ch. 6. A Near-Perfect World, If You’re a Wheel: Designing Communities That Work
Ch. 7. Design Criteria That Work: How Should We Think about Design?
Ch. 8. Design for Environment: Making It Better
Ch. 9. The Evolution of Design Species: Toward a Best-Case Scenario of Diversity, Conservation, and Caretaking
Notes
Index

Structures: Or, Why Things Don’t Fall Down

Author(s): J. E. Gordon

Publisher: Da Capo Press

ISBN: 0306801515

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

For anyone who has ever wondered why suspension bridges don’t collapse under eight lanes of traffic, how dams hold back—or give way under—thousands of gallons of water, or what principles guide the design of a skyscraper, a nightgown, or a kangaroo, this book will ease your anxiety and answer your questions. Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down is an informal explanation of the basic forces that hold together the ordinary and essential things of this world—from buildings and bodies to flying aircraft and eggshells. In a style that combines wit, a masterful command of his subject, and an encyclopedic range of reference, J. E. Gordon strips engineering of its technical mathematics and communicates the theory behind the structures of a wide variety of materials.Chapters on ”How to Design a Worm” and ”The Advantage of Being a Beam” offer humorous insights into human and natural creation. For architects and engineers there are cogent explanations of the concepts of stress, shear, torsion, fracture, and compression, and chapters on safety design and the relationship of efficiency to aesthetics. If you are building a house, a sailboat, or a catapult, here is a handy tool for understanding the mechanics of joinery, floors, ceilings, hulls, masts—or flying buttresses. Without jargon or over-simplification, Structures surveys the nature of materials and gives sophisticated answers to the most naive questions, opening up the marvels of technology to anyone interested in the foundations of our everyday lives.

Paperback, 395 pages
Publication date: May 1988

Notes on the Synthesis of Form

Author(s): Christopher W. Alexander

Publisher: Harvard Univ Press

ISBN: 0674627512

Order From: Amazon.com
(links will open in a new window)

“These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function.” This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design.

In the first part of the book, Mr. Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional unselfconscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities.

In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception.

Paperback Publication date: June 1970