The Whole Building Handbook

The Whole Building Handbook is a compendium of all the issues and strategies that architects need to understand to design and construct sustainable buildings for a sustainable society. The authors move beyond the current definition of sustainability in architecture, which tends to focus on energy-efficiency, to include guidance for architecture that promotes social cohesion, personal health, renewable energy sources, water and waste recycling systems, permaculture, energy conservation - and crucially, buildings in relation to their place. The authors offer a holistic approach to sustainable architecture and authoritative technical advice, on: * How to design and construct healthy buildings, through choosing suitable materials, healthy service systems, and designing a healthy and comfortable indoor climate, including solutions for avoiding problems with moisture, radon and noise as well as how to facilitate cleaning and maintenance. * How to design and construct buildings that use resources efficiently, where heating and cooling needs and electricity use is minimized and water-saving technologies and garbage recycling technologies are used. * How to 'close' organic waste, sewage, heat and energy cycles. For example, how to design a sewage system that recycles nutrients. * Includes a section on adaptation of buildings to local conditions, looking at how a site must be studied with respect to nature, climate and community structure as well as human activities. The result is a comprehensive, thoroughly illustrated and carefully structured textbook and reference.

People across the world are becoming more aware of the need for the buildings and cities they live and work in to be sustainable, but the issue of how to be sustainable can seem a confusing and complex one. These rules of thumb provide universal guidelines for the sustainable design of both buildings and the urban realm. It’s a global primer and textbook for anyone interested in understanding sustainability in the built environment, an ideal starting point for students as well as an aide memoir for more experienced readers and practitioners interested in this field.

Handbook of Energy Efficiency in Buildings: A Life Cycle Approach offers a comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the subject with a further focus on the Life Cycle. The editors, renowned academics, invited a diverse group of researchers to develop original chapters for the book and managed to well integrate all contributions in a consistent volume. Sections cover the role of the building sector on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, international technical standards, laws and regulations, building energy efficiency and zero energy consumption buildings, the life cycle assessment of buildings, from construction to decommissioning, and other timely topics. The multidisciplinary approach to the subject makes it valuable for researchers and industry based Civil, Construction, and Architectural Engineers. Researchers in related fields as built environment, energy and sustainability at an urban scale will also benefit from the books integrated perspective. Presents a complete and thorough coverage of energy efficiency in buildings Provides an integrated approach to all the different elements that impact energy efficiency Contains coverage of worldwide regulation

An introduction to the art of building, it has been revised and updated to reflect changes in the industry. Describes the materials used since ancient times—wood, stone, brick and the techniques by which they are made into buildings today—before proceeding to structural steel, reinforced and prestressed concrete, float glass, extruded aluminum, advanced gypsum products, synthetic rubber compounds and plastics. Deals with whole systems of building including foundations, framing, roofing, interiors, electrical and mechanical systems. Each chapter contains a summary, list of key terms and concepts, review questions and references. Illustrated with over 300 line drawings and 700 photographs.

The combined challenges of health, comfort, climate change and energy security cross the boundaries of traditional building disciplines. This authoritative collection, focusing mostly on energy and ventilation, provides the current and next generation of building engineering professionals with what they need to work closely with many disciplines to meet these challenges. A Handbook of Sustainable Building Engineering covers: how to design, engineer and monitor a building in a manner that minimises the emissions of greenhouse gases; how to adapt the environment, fabric and services of existing and new buildings to climate change; how to improve the environment in and around buildings to provide better health, comfort, security and productivity; and provides crucial expertise on monitoring the performance of buildings once they are occupied. The authors explain the principles behind built environment engineering, and offer practical guidance through international case studies.

Handbook of Green Building Design and Construction: LEED, BREEAM, and Green Globes, Second Edition directly addresses the needs of building professionals interested in the evolving principles, strategies, and concepts of green/sustainable design. Written in an easy to understand style, the book is updated to reflect new standards to LEED. In addition, readers will find sections that cover the new standards to BREEAM that involve new construction Infrastructure, data centers, warehouses, and existing buildings. Provides vital information and penetrating insights into three of the top Green Building Codes and Standards applied Internationally Includes the latest updates for complying with LEED v4 Practices and BREEAM Presents case studies that draws on over 35 years of personal experience from across the world

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

The combined challenges of health, comfort, climate change and energy security cross the boundaries of traditional building disciplines. This authoritative collection, focusing mostly on energy and ventilation, provides the current and next generation of building engineering professionals with what they need to work closely with many disciplines to meet these challenges. A Handbook of Sustainable Building Engineering covers: how to design, engineer and monitor a building in a manner that minimises the emissions of greenhouse gases; how to adapt the environment, fabric and services of existing and new buildings to climate change; how to improve the environment in and around buildings to provide better health, comfort, security and productivity; and provides crucial expertise on monitoring the performance of buildings once they are occupied. The authors explain the principles behind built environment engineering, and offer practical guidance through international case studies.