Download or read book A Natural System of House Design written by Charles G. Woods and published by McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains a modular system for designing houses and includes tips on energy efficiency and low-cost design
Download or read book Natural Architecture written by Charles G. Woods and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the theories concerning organic architecture and applies them to design challenges involved in earth sheltered housing.
Download or read book How Buildings Work written by Edward Allen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrated with hundreds of illuminating line drawings, this classic guide reveals virtually every secret of a building's function: how it stands up, keeps its occupants safe and comfortable, gets built, grows old, and dies--and why some buildings do this so much better than others. Drawing on things he's learned from the many buildings he himself designed (and in some cases built with his own hands), Edward Allen explains complex phenomena such as the role of the sun in heating buildings and the range of structural devices that are used for support, from trusses and bearing walls to post-tensioned concrete beams and corbeled vaults. He stresses the importance of intelligent design in dealing with such problems as overheating and overcooling, excessive energy use, leaky roofs and windows, fire safety, and noisy interiors. He serves up some surprises: thermal insulation is generally a better investment than solar collectors; board fences are not effective noise barriers; there's one type of window that can be left open during a rainstorm. The new edition emphasizes "green" architecture and eco-conscious design and construction. It features a prologue on sustainable construction, and includes new information on topics such as the collapse of the World Trade Center, sick building syndrome, and EIFS failures and how they could have been prevented. Allen also highlights the array of amazing new building materials now available, such as self-cleaning glass, photovoltaics, transparent ceramics, cloud gel, and super-high-strength concrete and structural fibers. Edward Allen makes it easy for everyone--from armchair architects and sidewalk superintendents to students of architecture and construction--to understand the mysteries and complexities of even the largest building, from how it recycles waste and controls the movement of air, to how it is kept alive and growing.
Download or read book Pretty Good House written by Michael Maines and published by Taunton Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pretty Good House provides a framework and set of guidelines for building or renovating a high-performance home that focus on its inhabitants and the environment--but keeps in mind that few people have pockets deep enough to achieve a "perfect" solution. The essential idea is for homeowners to work within their financial and practical constraints both to meet their own needs and do as much for the planet as possible. A Pretty Good House is: * A house that's as small as possible * Simple and durable, but also well designed * Insulated and air-sealed * Above all, it is affordable, healthy, responsible, and resilient.
Download or read book Nature by Design written by Eric Higgs and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-04-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecological restoration is the process of repairing human damage to ecosystems. It involves reintroducing missing plants and animals, rebuilding soils, eliminating hazardous substances, ripping up roads, and returning natural processes such as fire and flooding to places that thrive on their regular occurrence. Thousands of restoration projects take place in North America every year. In Nature by Design, Eric Higgs argues that profound philosophical and cultural shifts accompany these projects. He explores the ethical and philosophical bases of restoration and the question of what constitutes good ecological restoration. Higgs explains how and why the restoration movement came about, where it fits into the array of approaches to human relationships with the land, and how it might be used to secure a sustainable future. Some environmental philosophers and activists worry that restoration will dilute preservation and conservation efforts and lead to an even deeper technological attitude toward nature. They ask whether even well-conceived restoration projects are in fact just expressions of human will. Higgs prefaces his responses to such concerns by distinguishing among several types of ecological restoration. He also describes a growing gulf between professionals and amateurs. Higgs finds much merit in criticism about technological restoration projects, which can cause more damage than they undo. These projects often ignore the fact that changing one thing in a complex system can change the whole system. For restoration projects to be successful, Higgs argues, people at the community level must be engaged. These focal restorations bring communities together, helping volunteers develop a dedication to place and encouraging democracy.
Download or read book More Straw Bale Building written by Chris Magwood and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2005-03-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A completely rewritten and updated edition of this straw building classic. Straw bale houses are easy to build, affordable, super energy efficient, environmentally friendly, attractive, and can be designed to match the builder's personal space needs, esthetics, and budget. Despite mushrooming interest in the technique, however, most straw bale books focus on "selling" the dream of straw-bale building, but don't adequately address the most critical issues faced by bale house builders. Moreover, since many developments in this field are recent, few books are completely up to date with the latest techniques. More Straw Bale Building is designed to fill this gap. A completely rewritten edition of the 20,000-copy best-selling original, it leads the potential builder through the entire process of building a bale structure, tackling all the practical issues: finding and choosing bales; developing sound building plans; roofing; electrical, plumbing, and heating systems; building code compliance; and special concerns for builders in northern climates. New material includes: more extensive sections on electric wiring and plumbing updated sections on bale finishes and finishing a section on prefabricated straw bale walls a wider selection of case studies, photographs and illustrations a section on common mistakes budgeting for low-, medium- and high-cost projects, and new testing data that is in no other straw bale book. Down-to earth and complete, More Straw Bale Building makes the remarkable benefits of straw bale building available in the most comprehensive and practical book on the subject to date.
Download or read book A House is Not Just a House written by Tatiana Bilbao and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A House Is Not Just a House argues precisely that. The book traces Tatiana Bilbao's diverse work on housing ranging from large-scale social projects to single-family luxury homes. These projects offer a way of thinking about the limits of housing: where it begins and where it ends. Regardless of type, her work advances an argument on housing that is simultaneously expansive and minimal, inseparable from the broader environment outside of it and predicated on the fundamental requirements of living. Working within the turbulent history of social housing in Mexico, Bilbao argues for participating even when circumstances are less than ideal--and from this participation she is able to propose specific strategies learned in Mexico for producing housing elsewhere. A House Is Not Just a House includes a recent lecture by Bilbao at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, as well as reflections from fellow practitioners and scholars, including Amale Andraos, Gabriela Etchegaray, Hilary Sample, and Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco.
Download or read book The Natural House written by Frank Lloyd Wright and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Frank Lloyd Wright turns his attention to one of the most important personal problems now facing practically everyone in our society - it is a time for rejoicing. The world's greatest architect here meets the urgent problem of suitable shelter for The Family in a democracy, in a magnificent and - as was to be expected - challenging book. Here, presented at last in full detail, is the natural house. The moderate cost houses described in this book and profusely illustrated with 116 photographs, plans and drawings, are houses - of infinite variety for people of limited means - in which living has become for their owners a purposeful new adventure in freedom and dignity. Mr. Wright tells the story of the world famous "Usonian" houses, so that we now see, in text and illustrations, how they have evolved from original conception to final execution. He has also written a step-by-step description of the "Usonion Automatic," explaining just how that remarkable house is built - a simplified method of construction so devised that the owners themselves can build it with great economy and beauty. For this purpose, there are, in addition to Mr. Wright's text, special photographs and drawings of the method and materials, showing clearly how the Usonion Automatic is built.
Download or read book Architecture of the Well Tempered Environment written by Reyner Banham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reyner Banham was a pioneer in arguing that technology, human needs, and environmental concerns must be considered an integral part of architecture. No historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings and on the minds of architects. In this revision of his classic work, Banham has added considerable new material on the use of energy, particularly solar energy, in human environments. Included in the new material are discussions of Indian pueblos and solar architecture, the Centre Pompidou and other high-tech buildings, and the environmental wisdom of many current architectural vernaculars.
Download or read book Housing and Planning References written by and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Environments of Architecture written by Randall Thomas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This well-illustrated 'think piece' provides a much needed and topical philosophical introduction to the place of environmental design in architecture. The Environments of Architecture sets out a range of considerations necessary to produce appropriate internal environments in the context of a wider discussion on the effect of building decisions on the broader environment. The authors, from architecture and engineering, academia and practice, provide a rounded and well-balanced introduction to this important topic. Starting from a belief that the built environment can contribute more positively to the planet and the pleasure of places as well as answering the practical demands of comfort, they cover site planning, form, materials, construction and operation as well as looking at design on a city level. Presenting a thoughtful and stimulating approach to the built environment, this book forms an excellent guide for practitioners, students and academics concerned with our built environment.
Download or read book The Art of Systems Architecting written by Mark W. Maier and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If engineering is the art and science of technical problem solving, systems architecting happens when you don't yet know what the problem is. The third edition of a highly respected bestseller, The Art of Systems Architecting provides in-depth coverage of the least understood part of systems design: moving from a vague concept and limited resources
Download or read book Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States written by United States. Congress. House and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 1366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some vols. include supplemental journals of "such proceedings of the sessions, as, during the time they were depending, were ordered to be kept secret, and respecting which the injunction of secrecy was afterwards taken off by the order of the House."
Download or read book The Nature of Home written by Jeff Dungan and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Light-filled houses built with an emphasis on natural materials by award-winning Southern architect Jeffrey Dungan. Following in the tradition of populist architects Gil Schafer and Bobby McAlpine, Dungan designs new traditional houses for today—houses with clean lines, made with stone and wood, that carry an air of lasting beauty and that are made to be handed on to future generations. In his first book, Dungan shares his advice and insight for creating these “forever” houses and explores eight houses in full, from a beach house on the Gulf Coast to a farmhouse in the Southern countryside to a family home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. All speak of authenticity, timelessness, and lived history that reveals itself through the rich patinas and natural textures that come with age. Layered in between are thematic essays and imagery celebrating the importance of elements such as light, stone, and rooflines in creating a home.
Download or read book A Pattern Language written by Christopher Alexander and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Lake Flato written by Don Fluckinger and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this contribution to the ongoing debates over theorizing state power, the author draws on her fieldwork in Mexico to examine the ways in which local agrarian communities negotiate with the state and with local bureaucracies in an apparently hopeless round of mismanagement and corruption - which yet contains a self-correcting stability. While the ethnography focuses on a particular community at a time of transition, the author draws out the wider implications in ways that should be of interest not only to anthropologists concerned with Mexican ethnography, but also to students of political anthropology, more generally, and development studies.
Download or read book Building Systems Design written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
