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Moving across space and time, from prehistory to the present and around the world, this fascinating volume explores the many ways in which the earth has been transformed by human effort. In discerning text, more than 150 fabulous photographs - many of them taken by some of the world's premier aerial photographers - and 21 arresting drawings, paintings, and other artworks, Designing the Earth examines such diverse works as clay dwellings in Chad and Mali, adobe pueblos in the American Southwest, mud-brick ziggurats in Babylon, ancient Egyptian funerary monuments, subterranean aqueducts in Iran, Native American effigy mounds, the Nazca lines of Peru, artificial islands in Japan, the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, and earth-sheltered housing by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as earthworks by contemporary artists such as Michael Heizer and Andy Goldsworthy. By considering the works in a larger design context, and by discussing their meaning, import, and use, author David Bourdon opens the reader's eyes to the formal and functional characteristics of earthworks around the world as he explores how people on different continents, unknown to each other, demonstrated remarkable similarities in the recontouring of their landscapes.
A revolutionary guide to designing humane, eco-conscious homes, buildings, and cities of the future. It is estimated that the earth's population will expand to an unprecedented nine billion people over the next century. This explosion in population is predicted to place further stress on our environment, deplete our natural resources, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression due to overcrowding. In this visionary and uplifting book, Teresa Coady offers readers new hope. Rebuilding Earth is her blueprint for designing and building the cities, buildings, and homes of tomorrow, resulting in more conscious, sustainable, and humane living. Coady shows us how we can shift from an outdated Industrial-Age framework to a more humane, Digital-Age framework. This revolutionary approach will enable communities to harness various forms of green energy and reduce the amount of material needed to build infrastructure while contributing to a healthier planet (and society). We can then experience a new sense of purpose, health, and happiness. Meaningful and lasting change, the author tells us, can only come through designing interconnected communities that are vibrant, resilient, and communal. Unlike most predictions of doom and gloom, Coady presents a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity and its future. This book will appeal to those in the construction, design and development finance industries, as well as anyone interested in improving their lives through understanding the connections between the environment and health.
The Hybrid House highlights real people who have used a combination of design strategies to reduce their energy use - sometimes by as much as 90 percent! Author and photographer Catherine Wanek showcases sustainable new and renovated houses that incorporate natural building materials like straw bales, adobe and real wood, with renewable energy systems, that will minimize a modern home's carbon footprint, while ensuring a healthy environment for residents. See inspiring contemporary examples from the United States, Canada and Europe.
Earth, in common use for architectural construction for thousands of years, has in the past thirty years attracted renewed attention as a healthy, environment-friendly and economical building material. What needs to be considered in this context? The manual Building with Earth, which has been translated into many languages, describes the building technology of this material. The physical properties and characteristic values are explained in a hands-on manner: With proper moisture protection, earth buildings are very durable, and in particular the combination with wood or straw allows a wide spectrum of design options. Numerous built examples demonstrate the range of applications for this fully recyclable material.
This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.
How do we make sense of the Earth at a moment in which it is presented in crisis? To live in an epoch that is shaped by extensive environmental transformations is to be confronted with risks and uncertainties at scales larger than that of the planet. Paradoxically, while we worry that the sky may be falling on our heads, we remain so immobilized in part maybe because of our failures to comprehend the scales of a story that is difficult both to tell and to hear. Two Cosmograms mediates the dissonance between the environmental question at stake and the narrow repertoire of emotions and imaginations with which we try to understand these issues by exploring speculative fiction as the political art that integrates the story of the cosmos into our own life stories. In response to the expansion of infrastructural systems and resource exploitation beyond the Earth, the two projects -Neck of the Moon and Love your Monsters- engage the architectural imaginations of the Cosmos. The speculative fictions probe the politics and aesthetics of technological systems, both in the extra-planetary environment as well as here on Earth.
Can we ‘save the Planet’? For a resilient, durable and sustainable future for human society, we need to repurpose, reinvent, redesign, remake and recover our human-made world so that our built environment is benignly and seamlessly biointegrated with Nature to function synergistically with it. These are the multiple tasks that humanity must carry out imminently if there is to be a future for human society and all lifeforms and their environments on the Planet. Addressing this is the most compelling question for those whose daily work impacts on Nature, such as architects, engineers, landscape architects, town planners, environmental policy makers, builders and others, but it is a question that all of humanity needs to urgently address. Presented here are two key principles as the means to carry out these tasks – ‘ecocentricity’ being guided by the science of ecology, and ‘ecomimesis’ as designing and making the built environment including all artefacts based on the emulation and replication of the ‘ecosystem’ concept. Designing with ecology is contended here as the authentic approach to green design from which the next generation of green design will emerge, going beyond current use of accreditation systems. For those who subscribe to this principle, this is articulated here, showing how it can be implemented by design. Adopting these principles is fundamental in our endeavour to save our Planet Earth, and changes profoundly and in entirety the way we design, make, manage and operate our built environment.
In 1969, Ian McHarg's seminal book, Design with Nature, set forth a new vision for regional planning using natural systems. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, a team of landscape architects and planners from PennDesign have showcased some of the most advanced ecological design projects in the world today. Written in clear language and featuring vivid color images, Design with Nature Now demonstrates McHarg's enduring influence on contemporary practitioners as they contend with climate change and other 21st-century challenges.
This book explores creative solutions to the unique challenges inherent in crafting livable spaces in extra-terrestrial environments. The goal is to foster a constructive dialogue between the researchers and planners of future (space) habitats. The authors explore the diverse concepts of the term Habitability from the perspectives of the inhabitants as well as the planners and social sciences. The book provides an overview of the evolution and advancements of designed living spaces for manned space craft, as well as analogue research and simulation facilities in extreme environments on Earth. It highlights how various current and future concepts of Habitability have been translated into design and which ones are still missing. The main emphasis of this book is to identify the important factors that will provide for well-being in our future space environments and promote creative solutions to achieving living spaces where humans can thrive. Selected aspects are discussed from a socio-spatial professional background and possible applications are illustrated. Human factors and habitability design are important topics for all working and living spaces. For space exploration, they are vital. While human factors and certain habitability issues have been integrated into the design process of manned spacecraft, there is a crucial need to move from mere survivability to factors that support thriving. As of today, the risk of an incompatible vehicle or habitat design has already been identified by NASA as recognized key risk to human health and performance in space. Habitability and human factors will become even more important determinants for the design of future long-term and commercial space facilities as larger and more diverse groups occupy off-earth habitats. The book will not only benefit individuals and organizations responsible for manned space missions and mission simulators, but also provides relevant information to designers of terrestrial austere environments (e.g., remote operational and research facilities, hospitals, prisons, manufacturing). In addition it presents general insights on the socio-spatial relationship which is of interest to researchers of social sciences, engineers and architects.
In 1998, my colleague, Forrest Mims, and I began a project to develop inexpensive handheld atmosphere monitoring instruments for the GLOBE Program, an international environmental science and education program that began its operations on Earth Day, 1995. GLOBE’s goal was to involve students, teachers, and scientists around the world in authentic partn- ships in which scientists would develop instrumentation and experimental protocols suitable for student use. In return, data collected by students and their teachers would be used by scientists in their research. This kind of collaboration represented a grand vision for science education which had never before been attempted on such a scale, and we embraced this vision with great enthusiasm. Between 1998 and 2006, Forrest Mims and I collaborated on the development of several instruments based on Mims’ original concept of using light emitting diodes as spectrally selective detectors of sunlight, which was first published in the peer-reviewed literature in 1992. These instruments have evolved into a set of tools and procedures for monitoring the transmission of sunlight through the atmosphere, and they can be used to learn a great deal about the composition of the atmosphere and the dynamics of the Earth/atmosphere/sun system. If measurements with these instruments are made properly, they have significant scientific value, as well.