Sustainable architecture aims to build or renovate homes and buildings using a combination of energy-efficient technology, renewable materials, and innovative design. This approach reduces waste and uses sustainable products, which minimizes the environmental impact of new development.
The term sustainable architecture has evolved over the years giving us a new definition every decade. There are many theories and practices which help us to understand this term.
Here are 10 must-read books on sustainable architecture recommended for every architect:
1. Frank Lloyd Wright: Natural Design, Organic Architecture: Lessons for Building Green | Sustainable Architecture
This book resonates with the ideas and philosophy used by F.L. Wright in his designs to make them sustainable. This book explores the various techniques and use of modern-day technologies such as- the use of thermal massing, passive berm insulation, environmentally sensitive landscaping, passive ventilation systems, passive natural light keeping in mind on how climate, sustainability, sunlight, local materials, and passive environmental controls can become the inspiration for excellent design, and highlights.
2. Sustainable Construction: Green Building Design and Delivery
This is a leading reference book which has an updated resource in the field of sustainable construction with a broad range of including architecture, engineering, and construction This book delivers detailed information on all aspects of the construction of the green building, from materials selection to building systems and more. With the increase in sustainable construction, this book provides a comprehensive reference to all aspects of a project to show you how green building concepts and principles apply throughout the design and construction process.
3. Green Building Illustrated
This is a complete guide on how and why we need to build green, the theories supporting sustainable construction techniques. The authors; Francis D.K. Ching brings his signature graphic style to the topic of sustainable design and Ian M. Shapiro with the help of a graphical presentation to the theory, practices, and complexities of sustainable design giving an approach that proceeds methodically.
This is a wholesome book that appeals to all architects and designers, which addresses general principles such as holistic and integrated design, along with the use of practical realities like affordability and energy codes in designs.
4. Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design
This book deals with the concept of reusing and reimagining existing buildings. Kathryn Rogers has tried to explain the facts and myths behind the reuse of existing buildings where she states that “The construction and operation of buildings are responsible for 41 percent of all primary energy use and 48 percent of all carbon emissions.” This technique can subsequently help in the reduction of carbon emission from the building through the reuse of existing buildings is very challenging to accomplish but changing the way one thinks about environmentally conscious architecture can be achieved.
5. Vitamin Green | Sustainable Architecture
Vitamin green is a result of various surveys done in the field of architecture, landscape architecture, and product design in the twenty-first century. It contains projects that are built and under-construction projects of the most exciting and original green designs at all scales, from eyeglasses to landscapes and from motorcycles to skyscrapers which are nominated by an international collection of designers, curators, critics, and thinkers. This book provides the most lively and visually appealing illustrations of sustainable designs.
6. Ten Shades of Green: Architecture and the Natural World
This is a documentation of an exhibition organized by Architectural League, curator, and critic Peter Buchanan. It contains ten buildings as an example to convey that there is no single route to sustainability and no such thing as a green aesthetic. Preferably with the use of a variety of building types and use of advances in technology it is possible to create a building with the increased awareness of a building’s setting.
7. Biomimicry in Architecture
Nature being the biggest master of all times, when searching for genuinely sustainable building design and technology – designs that go beyond conventional sustainability to be truly restorative – we often find that nature got there first. This book is an extraordinary sourcebook provides the case studies predicting future trends and talks about the use of structures, materials, waste, water, thermal control, and energy with the help of evolved innumerable examples of forms, systems, and processes that can be applied to modern green design along with some extraordinary solutions to achieve sustainable designs.
8. Introduction to Architectural Science: The Basis of Sustainable Design
An ideal resource book resonating the basics of architectural science and provides a physical basis for it. This book helps the reader to help understand the potential of sustainable designs. This provides an outline of the changes created indoor with little or no use of energy, other than from renewable sources.
9. Strategies for Sustainable Architecture
This guide provides a wholesome knowledge of the design issues involved in delivering sustainable buildings and also gives a detailed description of the process of integrating principles into practice. It includes approximately one hundred case studies of sixty buildings. These case studies range from small dwellings to large commercial buildings from a range of countries. This book contains sections divided into design issues relating to sustainable development, including site and ecology, community and culture, health, materials, energy, and water.
10. Understanding Sustainable Architecture
This book is a review of the assumptions, beliefs, goals, and bodies of knowledge through a series of self-reflective questions for designers, the author’s Terry J. Williamson, Antony Radford, Helen Bennetts argue the ultimate importance of reasoned argument in ecological, social, and built contexts, including clarity in the problem, framing and linking this framing to demonstrably effective actions. This book aims to be transformative by promoting understanding and discussion of commonly ignored assumptions behind the search for a more environmentally sustainable approach to development.
