Sustainable architecture and design Books

Book SynopsisFor decades, American cities have experimented with ways to remake themselves in response to climate change. These efforts, often driven by grassroots activism, offer valuable lessons for transforming the places we live. In From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities, design expert Alison Sant focuses on the unique ways in which US cities are working to mitigate and adapt to climate change while creating equitable and livable communities. She shows how, from the ground up, we are raising the bar to make cities places in which we don’t just survive, but where all citizens have the opportunity to thrive. The efforts discussed in the book demonstrate how urban experimentation and community-based development are informing long-term solutions. Sant shows how US cities are reclaiming their streets from cars, restoring watersheds, growing forests, and adapting shorelines to improve people’s lives while addressing our changing climate. The best examples of this work bring together the energy of community activists, the organization of advocacy groups, the power of city government, and the reach of federal environmental policy. Sant presents 12 case studies, drawn from research and over 90 interviews with people who are working in these communities to make a difference. For example, advocacy groups in Washington, DC are expanding the urban tree canopy and offering job training in the growing sector of urban forestry. In New York, transit agencies are working to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians while shortening commutes. In San Francisco, community activists are creating shoreline parks while addressing historic environmental injustice. From the Ground Up is a call to action. When we make the places we live more climate resilient, we need to acknowledge and address the history of social and racial injustice. Advocates, non-profit organizations, community-based groups, and government officials will find examples of how to build alliances to support and embolden this vision together. Together we can build cities that will be resilient to the challenges ahead.Table of ContentsForeword: Eric Sanderson Preface Acknowledgements Interviewees Note on Illustrations Introduction: Reimagining Our Cities Part 1: Reclaim the Streets Chapter 1: Places by People, San Francisco Chapter 2: Safe Streets for Everyone, Minneapolis Chapter 3: Making the City Accessible, New York Essay: Building Inclusive Cities from the Ground Up by Tamika Butler Part 2: Tear Up the Concrete Chapter 4: Living with Water, New Orleans Chapter 5: Watershed Planning, Portland Chapter 6: Greenspaces for All, Philadelphia Essay: Green Infrastructure Lessons from U.S. Cities by Mami Hara Part 3: Plant the City Chapter 7: Canopy Cover in the “City of Trees”, Washington D.C. Chapter 8: From Street Trees to Natural Areas, New York Chapter 9: The Forest in the City, Baltimore Part 4: Adapt the Shoreline Chapter 10: Restoring Nature and Building Equity, San Francisco Chapter 11: Growing One Billion Oysters, New York Chapter 12: Moving Away from the Coast, Louisiana Essay, Adapting Urban Districts to Sea Level Rise by Mimicking Natural Processes by Kristina Hill Conclusion: A Path Forward Endnotes About the Author

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Book SynopsisThe lack of affordable housing and the climate crisis are two of the most pressing challenges facing cities today. Green affordable housing addresses both by providing housing stability, safety, and financial predictability while constructing and operating the buildings to reduce environmental and climate impacts. Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is the most comprehensive resource on how green building principles can be incorporated into affordable housing design, construction, and operation. In this fully revised edition, Walker Wells and Kimberly Vermeer capture the rapid evolution of green building practices and make a compelling case for integrating green building in affordable housing. The Blueprint offers guidance on innovative practices, green building certifications for affordable housing, and the latest financing strategies. The completely new case studies share detailed insights on how the many elements of a green building are incorporated into different housing types and locations. The new edition includes basic planning tools such as checklists to guide the planning process, and questions to encourage reflection about how the content applies in practice. While Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is especially useful to housing development project managers, the information and insights will be valuable to all participants in the affordable housing industry: developers, designers and engineers, funders, public agency staff, property and asset managers, housing advocates, and resident advocates. Every affordable housing project can achieve the fundamentals of good green building design and practice. By sharing the authors’ years of expertise in guiding hundreds of organizations, Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition gives project teams what they need to push for excellence.

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Book SynopsisUS cities are faced with the joint challenge of our climate crisis and the lack of housing that is affordable and healthy. Our housing stock contributes significantly to the changing climate, with residential buildings accounting for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. US housing is not only unhealthy for the planet, it is putting the physical and financial health of residents at risk. Our housing system means that a renter working 40 hours a week and earning minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any US county. In Gray to Green Communities, green affordable housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all. Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic, and environmental benefits. The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together the stories of those who benefit from living in green affordable housing and examples of Green Communities' developments from across the country. Bourland posits that over the next decade we can deliver on the human right to housing while reaching a level of carbon emissions reductions agreed upon by scientists and demanded by youth. Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet.

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Book Synopsis“Net Zero” has been an effective rallying cry for the green building movement, signalling a goal of having every building generate at least as much energy as it uses. Enormous strides have been made in improving the performance of every type of new building, and even more importantly, renovating the vast and energy-inefficient collection of existing buildings in every country. If we can get every building to net-zero energy use in the next few decades, it will be a huge success, but it will not be enough. In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of leading drivers of climate change. They provide a snapshot of a beginning and map towards a carbon-smart built environment that acts as a CO2 filter. Professional engineers, designers, and developers are invited to imagine the very real potential for our built environment to be a site of net carbon storage, a massive drawdown pool that could help to heal our climate. The authors, with the help of other industry experts, show the importance of examining what components of an efficient building (from windows to solar photovoltaics) are made with, and how the supply chains deliver all those products and materials to a jobsite. Build Beyond Zero looks at the good and the bad of how we track carbon (Life Cycle Assessment), then takes a deep dive into materials (with a focus on steel and concrete) and biological architecture, and wraps up with education, policy and governance, circular economy, and where we go in the next three decades. In Build Beyond Zero, King and Magwood show how buildings are culprits but stand poised to act as climate healers. They offer an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.

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Book SynopsisInnovation districts and anchor institutions, like hospitals, universities, and technology hubs, are celebrated for their ability to drive economic growth and employment opportunities. But the benefits often fail to reach the very neighbourhoods they are built in. As CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC), Matt Enstice took a different approach. Under Matt’s leadership, BNMC has supported entrepreneurship training programmes and mentorship for community members, creation of a community garden, bringing together diverse groups to explore transportation solutions, and more. Fostering participation and collaboration among neighbourhood leaders, foundations, and other organisations ensures that the interests of Buffalo residents are represented. Together, these groups are creating a new model for reenergising Buffalo, a model that has applications across the United States, and around the world. City Forward explains how BNMC works to promote a shared goal of equity among companies and institutions with often opposing motivations and intentions. When money or time is scarce, how can equitable community building remain a common priority? When interests conflict, and an institution’s expansion depends upon parking or development that would infringe upon public space, how can the decision-making process maintain trust and collaboration? Offering a candid look at BNMC’s setbacks and successes, along with efforts from other institutions nationwide, Enstice shares twelve strategies that innovation districts can harness to weave equity into their core work. From actively creating opportunities to listen to the community, to navigating compromise, to recruiting new partners, the book reveals unique opportunities available to create decisive large-scale change. Critically, Enstice also offers insight about how innovation districts can speak about equity in an inclusive manner and keep underrepresented and historically excluded voices at the decision-making table. Accessible, engaging, and packed with fresh ideas that are applicable to any city, this book is an invaluable resource. Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals hoping to make equitable change within their companies and organisations will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter, more equitable futures that we can create through thoughtful and strategic collaboration—moving forward, together.

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Book SynopsisIf your doorstep were a trailhead, how would you experience your city? With this newfound freedom, you might head in a new direction, walk to a restaurant in an area you’ve never explored, begin to savour your daily walk to work, or set out with a daypack to the city edges for fresh air and nature. Despite the known health benefits of routine walking, many people don’t have pleasant, safe places to walk. Too often, street networks have barriers - cul-de-sacs, freeways, or busy, dangerous-to-cross, arterials. Many lack sidewalks at all. There is a clear need for high-quality, readily accessible pedestrian infrastructure in and around urban areas. In Beyond Greenways: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes, greenways expert Robert Searns makes a case for walking infrastructure that serves a more diverse array of people. He builds on the legacy of boulevards, parkways, and greenways to introduce a next generation of more accessible pathways, wide enough for two people to stroll together, that stitch together urban and suburban areas. With more trails built near neighbourhoods that haven’t had access to them, more people can get around on foot, in town or further out. Searns lays out practical advice on how to plan and design them, garner community support, and get them built. Drawing inspiration from the US and abroad, he introduces two models - grand loop trails and town walks. Grand loop trails are regional-scale, 20 to 350-mile systems that encircle metro areas, running along the edges where city meets countryside. Town walks are shorter- 2 to 6-mile routes in cities. Throughout, Searns presents examples that embody these ideals, from Tucson’s Turquoise Trail, created by just two people with an idea and some left-over blue paint the city had, to a more deluxe 5-mile loop in Denver, to the Louisville Loop Trail in Kentucky, a nearly complete 100-mile grand loop. He also envisions these trails in new places across North America. Planners, trail advocates, community leaders and those who just want closer-in places to hike or walk will find the tools they need to develop successful and affordable plans, including how to envision them to fit various settings and strategies for implementation. Now is the time to think beyond greenways, to pursue a legacy of accessible pedestrian routes for this, and future, generations.Table of ContentsPrologue Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes Chapter 2: Grand Loop Trails: Configurations and Themes Chapter 3: Town Walks: Configurations and Themes Chapter 4: Guiding Principles and Attributes Chapter 5: Laying Out A Route Chapter 6: Making a Plan Chapter 7: Building Support, Engaging the Public, and Motivating Trail Users Chapter 8: Plans, Visions, and Thought Experiments Helpful Resources Endnotes

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Book SynopsisNew York City is filled to the brim with beautiful, unique green spaces-if you know where to look. From the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in the West Village to the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm in the Navy Yard, the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Queens to New York's Chinese Scholar's Garden in Staten Island, celebrated photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo takes readers on a tour of the most exceptional gardens and parks across the five boroughs in this lushly illustrated guidebook. Through Ngoc's beautifully photographed and well-researched profiles, readers will not only discover parks and gardens they never knew existed, but they will also learn the fascinating history of green spaces in New York and about the innovative new projects being undertaken to ensure we all can enjoy them for years to come. Head up to the nearly century-old Met Cloisters to discover a garden filled with plants depicted in the museum's medieval art collection, and an herb garden planted exclusively with species known in the Middle Ages. Then travel to Brooklyn to visit the Gil Hodges Community Garden, a tiny oasis along the Gowanus Canal and a critical piece of the city's green infrastructure: storm water is absorbed, filtered, and diverted to the garden, relieving pressure on the sewer system and thereby protecting the local waterways from contamination. The book features wildlife preserves and community vegetable patches, sprawling old-growth forests and vest-pocket parks of less than five thousand square feet. Each one tells a story, and offers a wonderful refuge from the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle.Trade Review“A true homage to New York, and an invitation to form an intimate relationship with its parks, brilliantly captured here from the Breugelesque winter scene in Prospect Park, to the jewel-like planting in the gardens of the Cloisters. There were so many places I didn’t know about, and cannot wait to explore.” —Miranda Brooks, landscape architect and contributing editor at Vogue“A true homage to New York, and an invitation to form an intimate relationship with its parks, which are brilliantly captured here, from the Breugelesque winter scene in Prospect Park to the jewel-like plantings in the gardens of the Cloisters. There were so many places I didn’t know about and cannot wait to explore.”—Miranda Brooks, landscape architect and contributing editor at Vogue“Visitors to New York City might see mainly concrete, glass, and asphalt, but ask any longtime resident and they’ll enthusiastically share their favorite (and absolutely necessary) green escapes, from pocket parks tucked between pencil towers to outlying spaces that verge on the nearly wild. Ngoc brings a New Yorker’s insider knowledge and an artist’s eye to the many slices of nature this great city has to offer.”—Stephen Orr, editor in chief, Better Homes Gardens“Visitors to New York City might see mainly concrete, glass, and asphalt, but ask any longtime resident and they’ll enthusiastically share their favorite (and absolutely necessary) green escapes, from pocket parks tucked between pencil towers to outlying spaces that verge on the nearly wild. Ngoc brings a New Yorker’s insider knowledge and an artist’s eye to reveal the many slices of nature this great city has to offer.”—Stephen Orr, editor in chief, Better Homes Gardens“In this gorgeous book, Ngoc Minh Ngo celebrates public gardens in New York City, in all five boroughs and all four seasons. Poring over the photographs and reading the history of each garden, I wanted to drop everything and race to see them up close—the familiar spaces I’ve loved for decades and especially the hidden gems. This is an essential guide for lifelong New Yorkers and visitors alike.” —Frances Palmer, potter, gardener, and author of Life in the Studio“In this gorgeous book, Ngoc Minh Ngo celebrates public gardens in New York City, in all five boroughs and all four seasons. Poring over the photographs and reading the history of each garden, I wanted to drop everything and race to see them up close—the familiar spaces I’ve loved for decades and especially the hidden gems. This is an essential guide for lifelong New Yorkers and visitors alike.”—Frances Palmer, potter, gardener, and author of Life in the Studio“For almost four centuries, the once vast unspoiled natural paradise of New York City was subjected to the uprooting and paving over of forests, meadows, and shorelines. The last four decades, however, provided an antidote, with ruined parks restored and thousands of acres of new parks created. New York Green documents in glorious, vivid images the near-miraculous transformation of NYC back to a city of startling natural beauty, from tiny churchyards to vast natural areas and glorious parks built atop post-industrial ruins.”—Adrian Benepe, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and former New York City parks commissioner“Once a vast, unspoiled natural paradise, New York City’s last four centuries were marked by uprooting and paving over of forests, meadows, and shorelines. The last four decades, however, provided an antidote, with ruined parks restored and thousands of acres of new parks created. New York Green documents in glorious, vivid images the near-miraculous transformation of NYC back to a city of startling natural beauty, from tiny churchyards to vast natural areas and glorious parks built atop post-industrial ruins.” —Adrian Benepe, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and former NYC Parks Commissioner

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Book SynopsisThis video-augmented book explains how the natural movements of the sun, wind and rain can be used to improve the well-being of people in buildings and raise awareness of sustainable living practices. In demonstrating how buildings can be designed to reconcile their traditional role as shelter from the elements with the active inclusion of their movement, the book shows how, in the process of separating us from the extremes of the natural world, architecture can also be a means of reconnecting us with nature.Related Link(s)

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Book Synopsis‘Eco-minimalism: the antidote to eco-bling’ reminds us that to build energy-efficient, ecologically benign and sustainable buildings is complex, comprising a set of interdependent factors influenced by little-understood science. The headline technologies, while legitimate in isolation, become less obvious in practice when context, building use, local climate, geology, economics, and many other influences come into play. The danger is that buildings are ‘greenwashed’ with eco-bling which is at best unnecessary and at worst counter productive and ecologically damaging. This book exposes the pitfalls of such greenwashing in an immediate, visually-arresting and authoritative way. The quickfire format is based on 30 years of practical experience. Its central message is that eco-bling should be ditched in favour of ‘eco-minimalism’ – the holistic, considered and appropriate deployment of building science in support of truly ecological, affordable sustainable architecture for everyone. The book is based on original experience and research from an architect at the vanguard of ‘green’ architecture. A critique of the technical fix approach is counterbalanced with the good housekeeping and frequently counter-intuitive eco-minimal alternative aimed at aspirant green architects, other construction professionals, developers, and owners for projects at all scales. A concluding chapter examines costs, demonstrating that eco-minimalism represents not just good green value for money but, quite simply, good value for money.

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Book SynopsisThis book combines the travel infrastructures of today with visitor centres, viewing platforms and holiday camps as its starting points, and shows how accessibility and intimacy of people and nature can be enhanced through the design of tourism infrastructure. There are many outstanding examples from around the world in this book. It also shows how to develop tourism while preserving certain landscape values to promote sustainable development. The book seeks to explore how buildings emphasise the impact of ecosystems and landscape experiences on their territories and create new ways to conserve nature, with a view to providing more references to relevant designers.

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Book SynopsisBuilt in 1889 and now home to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Spencer Mansion is a magnificent building with a rich and layered history. With detailed research, historian and author Robert Ratcliffe Taylor describes the original appearance of the house, designed by William Ridgway Wilson for Alexander Green and his family, as well as its inhabitants over the decades. Also known as Gyppeswyk, after the village in England where Green wed Theophila Rainer, the house is more commonly referred to as the Spencer Mansion, after later owners David and Emma Spencer. The book also chronicles the brief period when the residence served as BC''s Government House and concludes with the story of how the house came to function as an art gallery.A unique book, The Spencer Mansion showcases a true gem of Victoria''s architecture and history.

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Book SynopsisMore than half of America's waterbodies are unsafe for swimming, fishing, and as sources of drinking. Why? Because of unsustainable city building and poor farming practice. Beyond water quality problems, dysfunctional streams cause flooding and erosion of property, leading to neighbourhood blights. Not only can this be reversed, but repair of degraded urban streams can be a powerful agent for reinventing the physical environments of post-industrial cities. This requires trans-disciplinary collaboration between the fields of ecological engineering and urban design. The American city was uniquely premised on fusions of landscape and urbanism: a tradition with plenty of room for innovation. However, watershed plans remain data-and-policy-driven documents with a singular interest in repairing waterbodies. They have little to say about the city and urban design. Conversely, urban planning has not codified the value of healthy ecosystems within which cities are built. In this age of the Anthropocene, when most ecosystems are human-dominated, resilient urban design must account for biological processes. This book introduces watershed management into urban design with one simple demand: that every new development contribute to watershed stewardship, where infrastructure and building deliver ecological services in addition to urban services. The Conway Urban Watershed Framework Plan formulates a planning vocabulary for use among professionals and decision-makers to engage this new design market.

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Book SynopsisGEO - Earth - is a word that simultaneously signifies something vast and elemental. It refers to both the planet on which we live and the soil that sustains us. GEO is the physical and representational bedrock of landscape architecture - the foundation of many disciplines from which we draw our knowledge. Geography, Geology, and Geometry, in particular, are fundamental to our discipline’s intellectual core. And now, we seem ever more entangled in GEO as some scholars across the sciences and humanities argue that humans should be recognised as agents of change at geologic time scales. LA+ GEO includes interviews with the celebrated author of After the Map, William Rankin, author and citizensensing visionary Jennifer Gabrys, and New Zealand based media artist and author Janine Randerson with guest editors Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys explore site surveying and sensing technologies as part of an expanded toolkit for landscape architects to bring environmental patterns down to earth and into view. Other notable points are from Designer Robert Gerard Pietrusko who reveals the covert militaristic agendas of early aerial land cover interpretation, Geographer Matthew W. Wilson revisits the rise of critical cartography within geography in the 1980s and ‘90s. Media scholar Lisa Parks describes the politics of vertical mediation by recounting the importance of activists’ use of drone-captured video to document both the protests against the construction of an oil pipeline through tribal lands, as well as the aggressive countermeasures taken by law enforcement to squelch the protests. Jeffrey S. Nesbit and David Salomon, rocket launch pads provide a vehicle to unpack the relationship between terrestrial and extra-terrestrial territories. Geographers Douglas Robb and Karen Bakker caution against the voyeuristic tendencies enabled by the satellite gaze. Through illustrated “Geostories,” Rania Ghosn imaginatively engages the “global commons” of outer space and oceans. Designer Matthew Ransom examines the tension between grassroots organisations and fracking industries in Pennsylvania. Author and activist Lucy R. Lippard takes us on an aerial journey across the United States. Historian and geographer B.W. Higman traces our modern predilections towards flatness. Through a remaking of Eugène Violletle Duc’s Mont Blanc studies, landscape architect Aisling O’Carroll exposes the imposition of geometric rationalisation on nature. Noah Heringman revisits the sublime in 18th-century landscape design, offering parallels to today’s Anthropocene discourses about environmental depletion and Shannon Mattern examines how rocks are collected, examined, and displayed as objects of spectacular brilliance – objects that ultimately reflect back on us by illuminating the histories of oppression embedded in their extraction.

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Book SynopsisIn a world that fetishises aesthetic frivolity and iconographic bombast at the expense of substance and nuance, the critically acclaimed work of Johnsen Schmaling Architects stands out for its conceptual rigor, profound simplicity, and quiet repose. Formally restrained and informed by innovative tectonic and material experimentations, Johnsen Schmaling’s precisely crafted architecture creates poetic atmospheres of enduring clarity. Johnsen Schmaling: On Rigor is the firm’s first monograph and provides an in-depth look at thirteen seminal residential and commercial projects. The book reveals how the architects’ unique reading of context and cultural memory translates into an abstract palette of architectural operations that guide the entire design process, from initial concepts to intricate, meticulously detailed material assemblies.The crisply designed book features beautiful photography and delightful graphics that Illustrate how the projects came to life.

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Book SynopsisIn this moment of seemingly compounding global crises and existential concerns about the future of the planet, LA+ pauses to consider the values and implications of speculation. How are speculative acts understood differently within specific disciplinary structures versus broader cultural perceptions? Whether employed as a means of influence, a method of production, a form of practice, a manner of inquiry, a way of seeing, or a motivating ideology, LA+ Speculation engages speculation and the speculative as world-shaping concepts worthy of deep and critical reflection. Guest edited by Christopher Marcinkoski with Javier Arpa Fernandez, and other contributors include: Merve Bedir, Casey Lance Brown, Stuart Candy, Paul Dobraszyk, Aroussiak Gabrielian, Daisy Ginsberg, Adrian Hawker, Souhei Imamu, Karen Lewis, Min Kyung Lee, Mpho Matsipa, Alexandra Sankova, Jonah Susskind, Ytasha Womak.

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Book SynopsisIn the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum between the binary extremes of black and white it’s not gray, as you might expect, but green. And within green’s bandwidth there are more tonal variations than any other colour can make. Maybe this is why - envy, naivete, and money aside - green is generally synonymous with good. Green is paradise for Islam, luck for the Irish, and a healthy planet for environmentalists. Whereas the industrial past was grey, the future is green. LA+ Green explores the green spectrum from plants to politics and from art to science, with contributions from: Noam Chomsky; Robert D. Bullard; Kassia St. Clair; Neil M. Maher; Rob Levinthal; Sonja Dümpelmann; Peder Anker; Robert Mcdonald; Parker Sutton; Tamara Toles O’Laughlin; Nicholas Pevzner; Michael Marder; Shannon Mattern; Michael Geffel; Brian Osborn; Julian Bolleter; Cristina Ramalho; Robert Freestone; Richard Weller; Michael Geffel; Brian Osborn; Julian Raxworthy.

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Book Synopsis"In the history of architecture, there has never been a more important time to be an architect." — Common Edge Practice with Purpose is about designing buildings beyond their property lines to address some of society’s most urgent challenges: the climate emergency, racial and ethnic injustice, chronic homelessness, educational crises, and the preservation of the embodied carbon and culture of existing buildings. To successfully contend with these ecological and societal emergencies, the design values and practice of architecture must be rapidly transformed within the next decade. Architects must become creative agents of change, providing the vision and skill to lead our communities toward an equitable, climate-positive future for all. Twenty years ago, San Francisco–based Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects rededicated its practice to focus on these urgent issues. Its mission-driven designs not only address the critical concerns of twenty-first century architecture, but also bring clients and users into the dialogue. LMSa’s award-winning works show the creative potential of building a practice with purpose. In this book, LMSa shares its experience and insight as a call to action to the architecture profession. Through case studies, data-driven essays, user testimonials, and thought-provoking questions, LMSa offers design strategies to architects who want to make an environmental and social impact.Trade Review"In the history of architecture, there has never been a more important time to be an architect." - Common Edge

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Book SynopsisClimate change poses challenges for human survival and societal development, including frequent urban disasters such as high wave and urban waterlogging, as well as extreme weather events such as sea level rise, floods, tropical storm, wide-range drought, and high temperature in polar regions. Contributed in part by reducing greenhouse gas emission, and also by the means of improving local resilience, the international community have been working on mitigating the uncertain impact of climate change. Against the backdrop of carbon reduction policy such as Carbon Emission Peak and Carbon Neutrality proposed by Chinese government, regional sustainable progress inevitably calls for resilient strategies for human settlements that address local issues upon climate change adaption and resilience theories. Since the impact of climate change on human settlements, risk and resilience assessment methods, and spatial and technological strategies have already broadly studied by international academia, more attention should be taken into research on spatial planning, urban design, landscape design, innovative engineering, emerging technology application, and interdisciplinary perspective to strive to realize the goals of peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality. To this end, this issue expects to discuss the resilient strategies adaptive to climate change for improve human settlements at varied scales. Introducing international perspectives, LA Frontiers encourages the bridging the latest research outcome with application and practice.

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Book SynopsisThis publication impressively summarises the underlying research on the theme of energy by the Chair of Gion A. Caminada. Structured into 12 sections, it investigates the fundamentals of shaping space: form, geometry, material and construction – based on prominent examples in architectural history and a number of buildings by Caminada. Countless phenomena and rules of structural physics are also described in simple, clear terms.

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Book SynopsisNomos is an association of architects based in Geneva, Lisbon and Madrid. They collaborate on projects of all scales, from furniture to master plans, with a special focus on the cultural context and the environment. Primarily using drawing to shape their ideas, they explore new ways of creating community through buildings that seek to transform constraints into opportunities. They approach each project with enthusiasm, care and curiosity, always striving for sustainable beauty. Text in Spanish and French.

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Book SynopsisWood is an ideal building material for sustainable architecture. It grows back and absorbs large quantities of CO2. But where does it actually come from in each case, and how will we make forestry and wood processing fit for the future? In what ways are conventional notions of professions and qualifications in architecture, engineering, and construction tested by using wood as building material? French journalist Michèle Leloup together with architect François Leclercq — a pioneer of timber construction in France — have for a long time explored the ecological, economic, industrial, and technical challenges of using timber for major structures and urban architecture. This book summarises their findings using examples from the French forestry and construction industry. It also takes a look at Austria and the innovative work by Hermann Kaufmann, an internationally revered leader in the further development of traditional timber architecture. In addition, the book features five projects by Leclercq Associés. Richly and attractively illustrated with new images by French architecture photographer Cyrille Weiner, The Wood That Makes Our Cities offers a concise survey of topical questions and findings in contemporary timber construction.

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Book SynopsisPrefabricated housing, often associated with blighted urban land­scapes and monotonous grey boxes, has evolved into an approach to housing with a wealth of aesthetic and ­structural possibilities. Modern methods of constructing and assembling prefabricated buildings – methods that can be traced back to the 19th century – are going through a renaissance. This is true across the world, from Vancouver and New York to London and Berlin through to Astana and Singapore. Moreover, prefabrication now serves a wider range of purposes than ever before. In ­Moscow, Europe’s largest metropolitan area, it is primarily used ­­­­as a means to provide ­affordable homes. But in some countries, prefabrication is surprisingly also used to build exclusive, upmarket properties. This construction and design manual presents a range of ­different production and assembly methods currently used in the field of prefabricated housing. It particularly focuses on ­efficiency, sustainability, and market relevance, and presents strategies for ­organising processes along with best-practice examples that reflect the latest trends. The manual also ex­plores the historical development of prefabricated housing in order to discover its full architectural potential. Finally, it outlines ten design parameters for prefabricated housing and presents 15 noteworthy examples, making a fresh contribution to the debate on affordable housing today.

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Book SynopsisText in English & Portuguese. In November 2010, the NATO Summit held in Lisbon dominated the political news of the world''s media for 24 hours. In only three weeks Risco and P-06 Atelier created an ephemeral summit installation in the pavilions of Lisbon''s exhibition centre, which was designed not only to meet the strict requirements for an event of this scale but also to set standards in terms of sustainability and communication design. The spaces that were created provided the framework not only for a political but also for a media event. Each chapter of the book focuses on a special topic related to the project, from architecture and construction to media exposure. In addition, the book contains contributions from authors involved in the project as well as complementary images and drawings. The photographs by Fernando Guerra were taken before and during the event especially for this book. Risco is an architecture and urban design firm based in Lisbon. The firm has produced more than 200 projects over the last twenty years, covering many fields of activity. Among them are the Centro Cultural de Belém (in association with Vittorio Gregotti), the Expo 98 public spaces and the Hospital da Luz in Lisbon, the Antas Urban Project and the Estádio do Dragão in Oporto, and the new cruise ship terminal in Ponta Delgada, Azores. P-06 Atelier is an environment and communication design firm in Lisbon. The projects produced by the atelier include the Museu do Oriente, the Théâtre et Auditorium de Poitiers, France, and, more recently, the foyer of the Pavilion of Knowledge -- Ciência Viva in Lisbon.

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Book SynopsisTwo decades of work from a sustainability-minded Peruvian architectural firm This substantial paperback monograph chronicles 20 years of projects from Peruvian architectural studio Poggione+Biondi, helmed by René Poggione and Susel Biondi. Compiling a selection of their projects through photographic documentation and drawings, it also features texts by Zaida Muxí and Josep Maria Montaner that narrate the process and evolution of Poggione+Biondi's architecture. Among the firm’s acclaimed buildings are a hotel in Miraflores; the Campo Oeste House in Cieneguilla; and the Verdea apartments in Miraflores. In these buildings, as in all of their projects—from universities to parks and landscape works—sustainable materials and integration of natural materials are prominent features.

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Book SynopsisOn the pioneering ecological urban strategies of a Spanish public consortium BCNecologia (the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona) is a public consortium consisting of the City Council of Barcelona, the Municipal Council and Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and the Barcelona Provincial Council. BCNecologia has played a key role in defining a new urban model for Barcelona—a model that has placed the city at the forefront of worldwide urban transformations—by designing a superblock and orthogonal bus network strategy for the Catalan capital. BCNecologia: 20 years of the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona looks back at over 100 projects carried out by the Agency in cities across the world. These studies are presented through a tree with five themed branches that describe various sustainability indicators, superblock-based urban regeneration plans, new mobility and public space planning models, and environmental and circular economy-oriented proposals.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThis book offers the first comprehensive report on the topic of organizational innovation and sustainability of urban regeneration from the public manager's perspective. Starting from a rich set of case studies on urban regeneration from the region of Apulia, in Italy, it develops a framework for measuring their sustainability performance. It proposes the use of indicators related to different aspects of the urban regeneration process, including the participations of stakeholders; land use and buildings; economy and jobs; transportation; environmental pollution; energy use; waste management; as well as open spaces and wildlife. This book offers extensive information to graduate students and researchers, and to authorities, developers, investors and stakeholders alike, involved in the design, planning and management, and sustainable development of urban spaces. It is expected to foster a better understanding of the level of organizational innovation and sustainability of urban regeneration projects and the role of governing bodies in their implementation.Table of ContentsUrban regeneration and sustainability.- Area-based urban regeneration.- Culture as driver of urban regeneration: the role of organisational aesthetics from design to social innovation model.- The determinants of sustainability of urban regeneration. An empirical analysis in the Apulian context.

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