Susan Roaf

Stephanie Thomas

Manuel Fuentes

Have all the knowledge at your fingertips, with this 'how-to' guide to ecohouse design. Learn about the building materials and technology that you need to use to make your house 'green'. Case studies from around the world illustrate the best examples of eco design and inspire your own eco-designs.

A Design Guide

Ecohouse 2

Fergus Nicol

David Crichton

Sue Roaf

From the author of the bestseller 'Ecohouse' this challenging and exciting text gives you an insight into the real changes that are necessary to give our modern day built environment both 'sustainability' and 'survivability'. The book is based on the premise that climate change is going to happen and its impacts on our lives are going to be far worse than generally expected. Sue Roaf argues that many modern buildings are not only 'unsustainable' in themselves but are also having a catastrophic effect on the global climate. In a unique argument, she illustrates that the only way we can hope to survive the following century in tact is if we not only begin to radically reduce CO2 emissions from our buildings and stop building climatically disastrous building types but also build only the buildings that can survive in the changed climates of the future. Throughout the book, traditional and modern building types are used to: explain the history and impacts of climates past, present and future on buildings; set the scene in terms of the history of building development of where we are now and where we are going in terms of sustainability and survivability of buildings; develop two main scenarios of future building development with the 'business as usual' model and the 'survival plan' model, and to make a list of recommendations based on the two scenarios of what actions should be taken by architects, planners and engineers as well as local and national governments, businesses and ordinary people in ensuring the true sustainable nature of the built environment. · A unique text that reassesses the fundamentals of sustainable design · A discussion and design guide providing you with the full picture of true sustainability · Includes case studies supporting the argument that challenges orthodox architectural design

A 21st Century Survival Guide

Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change

Hom Bahadur Rijal

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.

Routledge Handbook of Resilient Thermal Comfort

Michael Humphreys

There has been widespread dissatisfaction with accepted models for predicting the conditions that people will find thermally comfortable in buildings. These models require knowledge about clothing and activity, but can give little guidance on how to quantify them in any future situation. This has forced designers to make assumptions about people’s future behaviour based on very little information and, as a result, encouraged static design indoor temperatures. This book is the second in a three volume set covering all aspects of Adaptive Thermal Comfort. The first part narrates the development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort from its early beginnings in the 1960s. It discusses recent work in the field and suggests ways in which it can be developed and modelled. Such models can be used to set dynamic, interactive standards for thermal comfort which will help overcome the problems inherited from the past. The second part of the volume engages with the practical and theoretical problems encountered in field studies and in their statistical analysis, providing guidance towards their resolution, so that valid conclusions may be drawn from such studies.

Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Foundations and Analysis

The fundamental function of buildings is to provide safe and healthy shelter. For the fortunate they also provide comfort and delight. In the twentieth century comfort became a 'product' produced by machines and run on cheap energy. In a world where fossil fuels are becoming ever scarcer and more expensive, and the climate more extreme, the challenge of designing comfortable buildings today requires a new approach. This timely book is the first in a trilogy from leaders in the field which will provide just that. It explains, in a clear and comprehensible manner, how we stay comfortable by using our bodies, minds, buildings and their systems to adapt to indoor and outdoor conditions which change with the weather and the climate. The book is in two sections. The first introduces the principles on which the theory of adaptive thermal comfort is based. The second explains how to use field studies to measure thermal comfort in practice and to analyze the data gathered. Architects have gradually passed responsibility for building performance to service engineers who are largely trained to see comfort as the ‘product’, designed using simplistic comfort models. The result has contributed to a shift to buildings that use ever more energy. A growing international consensus now calls for low-energy buildings. This means designers must first produce robust, passive structures that provide occupants with many opportunities to make changes to suit their environmental needs. Ventilation using free, natural energy should be preferred and mechanical conditioning only used when the climate demands it. This book outlines the theory of adaptive thermal comfort that is essential to understand and inform such building designs. This book should be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners of architecture, building engineering and management – for all who have a role in producing, and occupying, twenty-first century adaptive, low-carbon, comfortable buildings.

Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Principles and Practice

Now in its 3rd edition, the bestselling Ecohouse continues to be both a technical guide and an inspiration for thousands of architects, designers and eco-builders all over the world. As the need to slow climate change becomes increasingly urgent, growing numbers of people are looking to dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings by using more ecologically sound techniques. Ecohouse provides design information about the latest low-impact materials and technologies, showcasing the newest and best ‘green’ solutions with international case studies demonstrating sustainable design in action around the world. This edition has been expanded to include advice on powering Ecohouses using renewable energy - including wind, micro hydro and heat pumps - and an introduction to low impact building materials such as lime, earth and hemp. New case studies from across the globe have been added to inspire readers with real life examples of how to make an Ecohouse work Just reading this book won't save the world from the impact of climate change - but if everyone from governments down to householders followed its advice we might just begin to turn the tide. Additional audience: Eco-enthusiasts and green self-builders will appreciate the handy hints and references on refurbishment and advice on how to kit out their Ecohouse with the greenest appliances and fittings. Lecturers and students on sustainable design and construction courses will find the latest real-world case studies fascinating and a great source of inspiration for their studio project work.

Ecohouse

There is an urgent need to build human capacity to make the often vulnerable and exposed buildings and communities we live and work in more resilient to the changing social, economic and physical environments around us. Extensive research has been done over the last decades on both mitigation and adaptation to climate change in the built environment, but the outputs of much of this research have failed to result in the wider uptake of effective greenhouse gas emission reduction solutions. This volume introduces credible 'fresh thinking' on how this may be done. For the first time an emerging generation of research is brought together that is directly concerned with understanding, influencing and leading the transformation of markets and thinking in the built environment. Chapters cover: defining values setting targets consumer motivation selling existing ideas better developing new design principles, paradigms and programmes optimizing solutions to ensure that when change does happen, it does so in the right direction. Papers are contributed by leading experts in fields ranging from philosophy, the social, political and physical sciences, engineering, architecture, mathematics and complexity science. The resulting volume will be essential reading for all those involved with changing the mindsets of a generation on the need to, and ways to, build resilience to rapid change and transforming markets in the built environment.

Adapting to Climate Change

Transforming Markets in the Built Environment

Sylvia P. Beamon

This illustrated study places ice-houses in an historical context from earliest times until the present day. The text concentrates in particular on British designs, which are compared with similar structures around the world.

The Ice-houses of Britain

"Sue Roaf reassesses the fundamentals of sustainable design and provides case studies to support the argument that challenges orthodox architectural design. The book is based on the premise that climate change is going to happen and its impacts on our lives are going to be far worse than generally expected. [The author] argues that many modern buildings are not only 'unsustainable' in themselves but are also having a catastrophic effect on the global climate. In a unique argument, she illustrates that the only way we can hope to survive the following century in tact is if we not only begin to radically reduce CO2 emissions from our buildings and stop building climatically disastrous building types but also build only the buildings that can survive in the changed climates of the future."-- Back cover.

As the need to slow climate change becomes increasingly urgent, growing numbers of people are looking to dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of their own buildings by using more ecologically sound techniques. Ecohouse provides design information about the latest low-impact materials and technologies, showcasing the newest and best 'green' solutions with international case studies demonstrating sustainable design in action around the world. This edition has been expanded to include advice on powering ecohouses using renewable energy - including wind, micro hydro and heat pumps - and an introduction to low-impact building materials such as lime, earth and hemp. New case studies from across the globe have been added to inspire readers with real-life examples of how to make an ecohouse work.

Andrew Bairstow

50 years after the first Oxford Conference on Architectural Education, the 2008 conference brought together over 500 people from 42 countries to share best practice, discuss how, when, where and why we teach architecture now and in the future.

A Re-evaluation of Education in Architecture

The Oxford Conference

Closing the Loop: Benchmarks for Sustainable Buildings is an authoritative guide to the issues and techniques behind benchmarking sustainable construction. It describes how to measure and achieve sustainability in construction. It contains a palette of issues, indicators and benchmarks, techniques, methods and tools - assembled from practice in the UK and around the world - that will give designers, developers and occupants an overview and understanding of the complex challenges they face to deliver truly 'sustainable' buildings. The book describes the range of sustainable design options and the various tools and techniques that can be used to investigate their success, all with the aim of enabling a more holistic approach to what currently is a fragmented development system.

Susan Roaf

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