Download or read book Beyond Environmental Comfort written by Boon Lay Ong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Environmental Comfort highlights some of the key ideas that form the foundation of the field of environmental comfort and, at the same time, gives voice to some of the concerns and considerations on the limitations of the field as it stands today. Bringing together a range of foremost thinkers in their respective fields - Michel Cabanac, Derek Clements-Croome, Nick Baker, Harold Marshall, Juhani Pallasmaa, Dean Hawkes, and Constance Classen - this book argues for a deeper appreciation of how environmental comfort may be understood in terms of our relationship with the environment rather than as independent qualities. For the first time these diverse views are brought together by Editor Boon Lay Ong to present insights into a world beyond what is normally covered in academic research. In the process, an attempt is made to define the field for the future. This book shows that it is by understanding just how environmental design needs to go beyond mere comfort and deal with well-being that we can meaningfully design our future.
Download or read book After Cooling written by Eric Dean Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “ambitious [and] delightful” (The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world. In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s—when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress—to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm. Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture—in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values—combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. “Meticulously researched and engagingly written” (Amitav Ghosh), this “knockout debut” (New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.
Download or read book Creating the Productive Workplace written by Derek Clements-Croome and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The built environment affects our physical, mental and social well-being. Here renowned professionals from practice and academia explore the evidence from basic research as well as case studies to test this belief. They show that many elements in the built environment contribute to establishing a milieu which helps people to be healthier and have the energy to concentrate while being free to be creative. The health and well-being agenda pervades society in many different ways but we spend much of our lives in buildings, so they have an important role to play within this total picture. This demands us to embrace change and think beyond the conventional wisdom while retaining our respect for it. Creating the Productive Workplace shows how we need to balance the needs of people and the ever-increasing enabling technologies but also to take advantage of the healing powers of Nature and let them be part of environmental design. This book aims to lead to more human-centred ways of designing the built environment with deeper meaning and achieve healthier and more creative, as well as more productive places to work.
Download or read book Promoting Healthy and Supportive Acoustic Environments Going beyond the Quietness written by Francesco Aletta and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-11-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gathers 14 original contributions published in an IJERPH Special Issue that deal with the perception of environmental sounds and how such sounds are likely to affect human quality of life and well-being and the experience of a place. The research focus over the years has been gradually shifting from treating sound simply as “noise” and something that cities should get rid of to a potential “resource” to promote and support community life in public spaces. Three main topics or “needs” to be addressed by researchers and practitioners emerged from this Special Issue: (1) the need to re-think “quietness” in cities as something that goes beyond the mere “pursuit of silence”, (2) the need to integrate additional contextual factors in the characterization and management of urban acoustic environments for public health, and (3) the need to consider the acoustic quality of indoor spaces as opposed to an outdoor-only perspective. The contributions collected in this book will hopefully trigger new questions and inform the agenda of future researchers and practitioners in the environmental acoustics domain.
Download or read book The Indoor Environment Handbook written by Philomena Bluyssen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2010 award. Ensuring that buildings are healthy and comfortable for their occupants is a primary concern of all architects and building engineers. This highly practical handbook will help make that process more efficient and effective. It begins with a guide to how the human body and senses react to different indoor environmental conditions, together with basic information on the parameters of the indoor environment and problems that can occur. It then moves on to give a background to the development of the study and control of the indoor environment, examining the main considerations (including thermal, lighting, indoor air and sound-related aspects) for a healthy and comfortable indoor environment and discussing the drivers for change in the field. The final section presents a new approach towards health and comfort in the indoor environment, where meeting the wishes and demands of the occupants with a holistic strategy becomes the over-riding priority. The book is filled with useful facts, figures and analysis, and practical methods that designers who are keen to assess and improve the user experience of their buildings will find invaluable.
Download or read book The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture written by C. Alan Short and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture challenges the modern practice of sealing up and mechanically cooling public scaled buildings in whichever climate and environment they are located. This book unravels the extremely complex history of understanding and perception of air, bad air, miasmas, airborne pathogens, beneficial thermal conditions, ideal climates and climate determinism. It uncovers inventive and entirely viable attempts to design large buildings, hospitals, theatres and academic buildings through the 19th and early 20th centuries, which use the configuration of the building itself and a shrewd understanding of the natural physics of airflow and fluid dynamics to make good, comfortable interior spaces. In exhuming these ideas and reinforcing them with contemporary scientific insight, the book proposes a recovery of the lost art and science of making naturally conditioned buildings.
Download or read book The New Wild written by Fred Pearce and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist A provocative exploration of the “new ecology” and why most of what we think we know about alien species is wrong For a long time, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce thought in stark terms about invasive species: they were the evil interlopers spoiling pristine “natural” ecosystems. Most conservationists and environmentalists share this view. But what if the traditional view of ecology is wrong—what if true environmentalists should be applauding the invaders? In The New Wild, Pearce goes on a journey across six continents to rediscover what conservation in the twenty-first century should be about. Pearce explores ecosystems from remote Pacific islands to the United Kingdom, from San Francisco Bay to the Great Lakes, as he digs into questionable estimates of the cost of invader species and reveals the outdated intellectual sources of our ideas about the balance of nature. Pearce acknowledges that there are horror stories about alien species disrupting ecosystems, but most of the time, the tens of thousands of introduced species usually swiftly die out or settle down and become model eco-citizens. The case for keeping out alien species, he finds, looks increasingly flawed. As Pearce argues, mainstream environmentalists are right that we need a rewilding of the earth, but they are wrong if they imagine that we can achieve that by reengineering ecosystems. Humans have changed the planet too much, and nature never goes backward. But a growing group of scientists is taking a fresh look at how species interact in the wild. According to these new ecologists, we should applaud the dynamism of alien species and the novel ecosystems they create. In an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, it is absolutely crucial that we find ways to help nature regenerate. Embracing the new ecology, Pearce shows us, is our best chance. To be an environmentalist in the twenty-first century means celebrating nature’s wildness and capacity for change.
Download or read book 1989 2nd European Conference on Architecture written by T.C. Steemers and published by Springer. This book was released on 1990-04-30 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of an International Conference held at Paris, France, December 4-8, 1989
Download or read book A Psalm for the Wild Built written by Becky Chambers and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Hugo Award! In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Comfort Theory and Practice written by Katharine Kolcaba and published by Springer Publishing Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I am most excited and impressed with the scope and focus of this work. As I began to read it, I had trouble putting it down. It is highly readable, engaging, all-inclusive, and most informative. Jean Watson, RN, PhD, HNC, FAAN I am honored and delighted to recommend this text for all nurses who cared for and care about patients. from the Foreword by May Wykle, RN, PhD, FAAN This book places comfort at the forefront of nursing care, by presenting a carefully researched theory of comfort that nurses can use as a framework for practice. Engagingly written, the book combines a first-person account of the development of the theory with supporting research, and practical information for its application. Kolcaba analyzes the concept of comfort; describes its physical, psychospiritual, environmental and sociocultural components; evaluates its meaning in the many different contexts in which health care occurs; and describes how it can be measured. The appendix includes comfort care questionnaires that can be used with patients in many settings, and a comfort scale that can be used with patients for a quick assessment of comfort. Clinicians, researchers, educators, and students will find this holistic approach helpful in setting priorities and parameters for patient care.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Resilient Thermal Comfort written by Fergus Nicol and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together some of the finest academics in the field to address important questions around the way in which people experience their physical environments, including temperature, light, air-quality, acoustics and so forth. It is of importance not only to the comfort people feel indoors, but also the success of any building as an environment for its stated purpose. The way in which comfort is produced and perceived has a profound effect on the energy use of a building and its resilience to the increasing dangers posed by extreme weather events, and power outages caused by climate change. Research on thermal comfort is particularly important not only for the health and well-being of occupants but because energy used for temperature control is responsible for a large part of the total energy budget of the built environment. In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the vulnerabilities of the thermal comfort system; how and why are buildings failing to provide safe and agreeable thermal environments at an affordable price? Achieving comfort in buildings is a complex subject that involves physics, behaviour, physiology, energy conservation, climate change, and of course architecture and urban design. Bringing together the related disciplines in one volume lays strong, multi-disciplinary foundations for new research and design directions for resilient 21st century architecture. This book heralds workable solutions and emerging directions for key fields in building the resilience of households, organisations and populations in a heating world.
Download or read book Envisioning Eden written by Noel B. Salazar and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As tourism service standards become more homogeneous, travel destinations worldwide are conforming yet still trying to maintain, or even increase, their distinctiveness. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Arusha, Tanzania, this book offers an in-depth investigation of the local-to-global dynamics of contemporary tourism. Each destination offers examples that illustrate how tour guide narratives and practices are informed by widely circulating imaginaries of the past as well as personal imaginings of the future.
Download or read book Beyond Environmental Crisis written by Alan R. Drengson and published by New York [N.Y.] : P. Lang. This book was released on 1989 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Environmental Crisis addresses the most pressing challenge facing humanity at the end of the 20th Century: Can the peoples of the Earth get together with enough creativity, commitment and skill to avert the twin threats of nuclear holocaust and environmental destruction? This book employs comparative, creative philosophical inquiry to analyze and offer alternatives to the modern Western worldview which was the foundation of the Western technological revolution. It describes an emerging alternative ecophilosophy that is inclusive enough to serve as a cross-cultural ground for synthesis of new visions of technological and social practices that promote ecological harmony, wisdom, and democratic values. It exemplifies appropriate philosophizing as an art that creatively uses shifting paradigms as a transformative discipline leading to the creation of new practices of appropriate design, for diverse lifestyles which promote preservation of the Earth's wild places, while sustaining its ecological communities. Comparative, creative, ecophilosophical inquiry facilitates participatory activity, which becomes an applied philosophy of life that is a way to ecosophy (wisdom and harmony based on ecocentric values). The way to ecosophy leads beyond environmental crises. To illustrate this transformation two philosophies are described, along with their ideals of progress, persons, community and Nature: The technocratic representing the dominant industrial paradigm, the planetary person (pernetarian) representing an ecosophic alternative.
Download or read book Human Thermal Environments written by Ken Parsons and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our responses to our thermal environment have a considerable effect on our performance and behavior, not least in the realm of work. There has been considerable scientific investigation of these responses and formal methods have been developed for environmental evaluation and design. In recent years these have been developed to the extent that detailed national and international standards of practice have now become feasible. This new edition of Ken Parson's definitive text brings us back up to date. He covers hot, moderate and cold environments, and defines these in terms of six basic parameters: air temperature, radiate temperature, humidity, air velocity, clothing worn, and the person's activity. There is a focus on the principles and practice of human response, which incorporates psychology, physiology and environmental physics with applied ergonomics. Water requirements, computer modeling and computer-aided design are brought in, as are current standards. Special populations, such as the aged or disabled and specialist environments such as those found in vehicles are also considered. This book continues to be the standard text for the design of environments for humans to live and work safely, comfortably and effectively, and for the design of materials which help the same people cope with their environments.
Download or read book Beyond Sustainable written by Ryan Ludwig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Sustainable discusses the relationship between human-beings and the constructed environments of habitation we create living in the Anthropocene, an increasingly volatile and unpredictable landscape of certain change. This volume accepts that human-beings have reached a moment beyond climatological and ecological crisis. It asks not how we resolve the crisis but, rather, how we can cope with, or adapt to, the irreversible changes in the earth-system by rethinking how we choose to inhabit the world-ecology. Through an examination of numerous historical and contemporary projects of architecture and art, as well as observations in philosophy, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, neurobiology and psychology, this book reimagines architecture capable of influencing and impacting who we are, how we live, what we feel and even how we evolve. Beyond Sustainable provides students and academics with a single comprehensive overview of this architectural reconceptualization, which is grounded in an ecologically inclusive and co-productive understanding of architecture.
Download or read book Architecture Beyond Architecture written by Cynthia C. Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume features the projects entered for the 1995 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. An introductory chapter discusses the award and explores spirituality in buildings and contemporary society. The book includes descriptions of the winning designs in Yemen, Tunisia, Pakistan, Senegal and India. Contributors include Charles Jencks, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry.
Download or read book Societal Risk Assessment written by Richard C. Schwing and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume constitutes the papers and discussions from a symposium on "Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe is Safe Enough?" held at the General Motors Research Laboratories on October 8-9, 1979. This symposium was the twenty-fourth in an annual series sponsored by the Research Laboratories. Initi ated in 1957, these symposia have as their objective the promotion of the interchange ofknowledge among specialists from many allied disciplines in rapidly developing or changing areas ofscience or technology. Attendees characteristically represent the academic, government, and industrial institutions that are noted for their ongoing activities in the particular area of interest. The objective of this symposium was to develop a balanced view of the current status of societal risk assessment's role in the public policy process and then to establish, if possible, future directions of research. Accordingly, the symposium was structured in two dimensions; certainty versus uncertainty and the subjective versus the objective. Furthermore, people representing extremely diverse discip lines concerned with the perception, quantification, and abatement of risks were brought together to provide an environment that stimulated the exchange of ideas and experiences. The keys to this exchange were the invited papers, arranged into four symposium sessions. These papers appear in this volume in the order of their presentation. The discussions that in turn followed from the papers are also included.
