It’s summer, and while jobs still may be few and far between, opportunities for expanding your horizons and augmenting your knowledge are easy to find. These new residential design and building books make it even easier—at an attractive price. Green Living: Architecture and Planning (Rizzoli New York, $45) by The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales, offers a thorough overview on environmentally sound building and planning practices. Through extensive project descriptions, photographs, and detail drawings, the book explores evolving strategies for sustainable building, including graywater recovery, green roofs, contextual design, and human-scale architecture. Essays by notable practitioners Andrés Duany, Victor Deupi, Bruce King, Stephen A. Mouzon, and Norman Crowe are featured.
In Rematerial: From Waste to Architecture (W.W. Norton & Co., $49.95), authors Alejandro Bahamón and Maria Camila Sanjinés discuss many innovative ways to divert materials from the waste stream and convert them into useful, imaginative, and attractive buildings. Featured projects incorporate a variety of discarded materials, such as paper cups or shipping containers, that have been transformed into sustainable, innovative, and sometimes daring projects by design professionals around the world.
Offering design inspiration for creating beautiful, luxurious, and eco-friendly outdoor environments, The Sustainable Landscape: Recycling Materials / Water Conservation (Schiffer Books, $29.99) by award-winning landscape designer Damon Lang features 10 residential landscape projects in a variety of styles that incorporate recycled materials and use water efficiently for their climates. Each project is photographed in detail to illustrate the techniques and materials used.
The frequently experimental residential work of Cambridge, Mass.-based architect Peter Rose is the subject of Peter Rose: Houses (Princeton Architectural Press, $40). The book details five houses that function as laboratories for testing Rose’s ideas while existing in harmony with their respective landscapes. Each house is thoroughly explored, from client collaboration through construction.
Affordable Architecture: Great Houses on a Budget (Images Publishing, $50) by Stephen Crafti features 50 budget-driven residential projects from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, and the United States that exemplify the value of strong ideas over unlimited funds. Each new house, renovation, and kit home demonstrates the high level of design, sustainability, and livability that can be accomplished on tight budgets. For each project, Crafti includes extensive notes, outlines an “insider’s tip” from the owner or architect, and lists the green elements incorporated.
Exploring seven of the houses designed by architectural partners Arthur Andersson and Chris Wise, Natural Houses: The Residential Architecture of Andersson-Wise (Princeton Architectural Press, $40), authored by the pair, illustrates the firm’s expression of design concepts through detailing and craftsmanship. The book studies their use of forms derived from the American barn and cottage vernaculars, as well as their use of regionally appropriate and aesthetically timeless materials to enhance each house’s sense of place. An introduction by Rick Sundberg of Olson Kundig Architects and essays by design editor Jen Renzi and Frederick Steiner, dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, track the firm’s evolution.
Visit your favorite e-tailer to purchase any of these new titles.
