Gentle Architecture

Based on the premise that land should be left no worse than an architect finds it, the book explores realistic, workable alternatives to preserve natural resources in the course of architectural design and construction. There are discussions on the following topics: how cities can be revived and provide food and oxygen instead of waste and pollution; how to avoid the environmental waste of paving large areas; and how to develop a land-use ethic that involves conservation, restoration, and utilization of natural terrain and resources.

Gentle architecture

Arts & Photography

Wells, Malcolm

Architecture

McGraw=Hill

Notes from the energy underground

Van Nostrand-Reinhold Co.

"Everyone who designs a house should have to memorize the rules in this book . before being allowed to purchase a drafting pencil. Mac and Charles have managed to consolidate most everything they know about residential design with wit, Clarity, and excellent sketches" -- David Wright, Noted Solar Designer and Environmental Architect * Designing Your Natural House Charles G. Woods and Malcolm Wells As concerns about our mistreatment of the environment keep growing, the trend toward housing that blends with rather than works against natural surroundings continues to accelerate. This important guide explores and illustrates all aspects of how to integrate dwellings with their natural settings. The authors are leading names in the natural design field whose work has been inspired by the contour-friendly, organic style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Charles G. Woods and Mclcolm Wells offer a wide range of invaluable design tips for both constructing new houses and remodeling existing ones. Every design they cover is in accordance with today's ecological and environmental concerns. Beautifully illustrated and hand lettered throughout, this guide explains how to choose the best site design, lay out floor plans, landscape, and incorporate energy-efficient features wherever possible. You're shown how to solve many design, ecological, and environmental problems, as well as how to keep design costs as low as possible. Numerous before-and-after graphics clarify every stage in the design process, and do and don't examples help you avoid common mistakes encountered when designing natural dwellings. Included are 150 money- and energy-saving tips more than 200 tricks of the trade that help assure exemplary results, and sample house plans (which you can order) that promote further understanding of how to integrate designs with the natural site. Designing Your Natural House is timely, comprehensive, and visually appealing, making it an ideal source for architects, contractors, interior designers, landscape architects, do -it-yourselfers, and remodelers.

Designing Your Natural House (Wiley-Vnr)

Engineering & Transportation

Woods, Charles G.

Engineering

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

How to buy solar heating ... without getting burnt!

How to buy solar heating ... without getting burnt!

Rodale Press

Architectural designs accompany a discussion of the various aspects of and recent improvements in building homes and businesses underground

Underground Designs

Brick House Pub. Co.

From the Preface: "...Heating and cooling with the sun doesn't have to be complicated and expensive. This book is for all of us who have burned our behinds on the sun-baked seats of our cars, who are concerned by the environmental damage being done by fossil fuels, and who are ready to do something about it all - just as soon and as simply as possible. Passive solar heating and cooling does not depend on pumps or fans or any other devices. Instead, it relies on the natural ebb and flow of the energy of the sun through a house. With a few facts from this book and a little common sense, you can, by combining passive solar design with energy conservation, reduce by as much as 85% the heating and cooling bills for a new house from that for a conventional house. And many of the ideas can be adapted to existing houses as well...."

Passive Solar Energy: The Homeowner's Guide to Natural Heating and Cooling

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Anderson, Bruce

Home Improvement & Design

Chelsea Green Pub. Co

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

Classic Architectural Birdhouses and Feeders

Technology

Malcolm Wells

Review\nArchitect Malcolm Wells has been operating on (some might say obsessing on) a simple and singular premise for over 30 years: that houses should be built below the land rather than on top of it. Basically, Wells simply hates the way conventional buildings rise from the ground to insult the sky with their boxy nakedness. As he states early on, "Rather than stand alone in contrast to nature, underground architecture lies in her arms." So what do the houses look like? Actually, rather nice, from this reviewer's standpoint. (This is a "sketchbook," remember, and is illustrated with scores and scores of drawings and photographs.) While it's hard to do justice to Wells without referring to his lush and amusing drawings, let's pretend. Imagine your basic, 'fifties, flat-roofed "modem house." Now sink it into the ground so that the window sills are at toe level. Now cover the roof with a thick layer of contoured earth, and plant a forest of shrubs and trees. Contour the grade some more for driveways and entries, and what meets the eye of a visitor are gracious, glazed horizontals that look like the most charming parts of Chichen Itza. What this book is not is a handbook for do-it-yourselfers considering the cost/benefits of going the subsurface route to the home of their dreams. It is is a retrospective look at 26 years of architectural work, most of which, well, never got off the ground. The musings on these failed dreams are what give this book most of its charm and all of its purpose. The writing is nontechnical, lively, surprisingly witty, richly humane, and (again, surprisingly for an architect) self-effacing. My final thought at the end of this book was that it was worth reading more for what it teaches about building a life worth living than a house worth living in. -- From Independent Publisher

An Architect's Sketchbook of Underground Buildings: Drawings and Photographs

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Books by Wells, Malcolm