Recognition

Sustainable Homes puts to rest the stigma that "green architecture" is unattractive and unsuitable for residential architecture.For the houses shown in this volume represent design equal to or superior to most conventional houses. Each of these "eco" houses is unique. Some tread lightly on the site by nestling into the land. Others are designed to be extremely well suited to the climactic zones in which they are built. Many use materials that do no harm to the environment--materials that are recycled, salvaged, or harvested. The houses featured in Sustainable Homes are designed by today's top architects such as Obie Bowman, Fernau and Hartman, Hanrahan and Meyers, and Lake/Flato. They reveal how much the parameters of ecological design have expanded in just a few short years. Over two dozen individual houses are featured -- from locations as diverse as a Canadian cove to the Arizona desert, from Kansas plains to the Norwegian coast, from California bluffs to South Carolina wetlands -- each described through descriptions, photographs, plans, drawings, and schematics. Jones-Johnson Residence Low Compound

The buildings selected for this book have little in common-they come from different cities across the globe and represent the work of some of the world's most accomplished architects, who often have vastly different outlooks, each radically defying convention and producing innovative alternatives for residential spaces. Each project is profiled with images of the completed construction, reproductions of the layouts and floorplans, and a description of how the design came to be. Some architects highlight the obstacles inherent in working with a particular site, while others discuss how the clients and their lifestyles were the chief elements around which they designed the house. Each profile demonstrates what makes the project unique and what source provided the impetus or inspiration for designing the house in that particular way. All these houses defy expectations and explode the notion of what "experimental" means in residential architecture. The Walner Residence