You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The author takes a comprehensive look at projects that exemplify approaches to this field. From museums to residences, from office buildings to universities and yoga centers, this book showcases 28 examples of integrated design that cut across building types, budgets, climates, and locales.
Departing from the simple question Why do we heat and cool buildings with air?, this book focuses on the technique of thermally active surfaces. This technique uses water in building surfaces to heat and cool bodies - a method that is at once more efficient, comfortable, and healthy. This technique thus imbues the fabric of the building with a more poignant role: its structure is also its primary heating and cooling system. In doing so, this approach triggers a cascading set of possibilities for how well buildings are built, how well they perform, and how long they will last: pointing the way toward multiple forms of sustainability. The first section of the book contrasts the parallel histor...
What is the best way to consider energy in buildings? For over a century, the building industry has largely focused on ideas of insulation and isolation for its energetic practices. A growing movement of designers claim that other concepts and practices are required for the non-isolated energy systems of architecture. This book describes the history, theory and facts of the mainstream isolation technologies and the emerging alternative design approaches. It is a book on the scientific, material, and design history of building isolation; but more importantly, it is a book on isolated and non-isolated perspectives on energy in architecture. Written by a registered practicing architect with detailed technical knowledge, who is at the same time a researcher and experienced teacher, the aim is to understand the different scientific, architectural and cultural approaches to energy and to promote a non-isolated perspective: a thermodynamically accurate, ecologically powerful, culturally relevant, and architecturally ambitious perspective on energy in architecture.
The laws of thermodynamics—and their implications for architecture—have not been fully integrated into architectural design. Architecture and building science too often remain constrained by linear concepts and methodologies regarding energy that occlude significant quantities and qualities of energy. The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture addresses this situation by providing a clear overview of what energy is and what architects can do with it. Building on the emergy method pioneered by systems ecologist Howard T. Odum, the authors situate the energy practices of architecture within the hierarchies of energy and the thermodynamics of the large, non-equilibrium, non-linear energy syste...
We can no longer view building components as artifacts (a brick or a boiler) or as autonomous systems (air conditioning or prefabrication). Rather these components and systems are part of much larger systems of which architects are one agent. This book will help architects more broadly envision these networks including : canonical texts as well as contemporary thinking from well known theorists and practitioners, each contribution frames a specific range of technology in relation to society such as building process, products, economies and ecologies clearly structured, the book is divided into three parts; each accompanied by a comprehensive introduction by the editors an annotated bibliogra...
From small-scale thermal properties to large-scale forestry, territorial, and carbon cycle issues, wood has latent propensities not well addressed in the current discourse on wood construction. Through a range of design research formats-from material testing to in-situ documentation to speculative urban projects- this book articulates and illustrates future architectural and ecological potentials of wood.
Architecture is increasingly understood as a field of practice that is inextricably embedded in ecologies and energy systems, and yet embodied energy-the various forms of energy required to ex- tract raw matter, to produce and transport building materials, and to assemble a given building- remains largely under-explored in its ramifications for both design and environment. As operational energy has declined as a proportion of buildings' total energy consumption, embodied energy has become an essential site for further speculation and innovation. 'Embodied Energy and Design: Making Architecture between Metrics and Narratives' asks questions about the varying scales, methods of analysis, and opportunities through which we might reconsider the making of architecture in the context of global flows of energy and resources. 120 illustrations
Advances in the materials and the digitalization of architecture bring about new methods in design and construction. Whereas traditional timber construction consists of pre-cut and pre-assembled timber sections, modern timber buildings today consist of elaborate wood-based materials. Owing to their flexibility and good properties in terms of building physics and ecology, these wood-based materials are ideal for computer-aided building component production. Fifteen case examples from research, teaching, and practical applications provide inspiring insights into the potential of formable wood-based materials and digital design: Woven Wood, Wood Foam, Living Wood and Organic Joints, Timber Joints for Robotic Building Processes, Efficiencies of Wood, Designing with Tree Form.
Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture provides a series of essays that explore what it means to use, modify and create computational tools in a contemporary design environment. Landscape architecture has a long history of innovation in the areas of computation and media, particularly in how the discipline represents, analyses, and constructs complex systems. This curated volume spans academic and professional projects to form a snapshot of digital practices that aim to show how computation is a tool that goes beyond methods of representation and media. The book is organized in four sections; syntax, perception, employ, and prospective. The essays are written by leading academics and professionals and the sections examine the role of computational tools in landscape architecture through case studies, historical accounts, theoretical arguments, and nascent propositions.