Construction Resources: Energy Conservation

Does energy consumption influence architectural style? Should more energy-efficient buildings look different? Can that "look" be used to explain or enhance their performance? Architecture and Energyprovides architects and architectural theorists with more durable arguments for environmental design decisions, arguments addressing three different scales or aspects of contemporary construction.

There is growing recognition that the environmental quality of workplaces has a measurable impact on health, wellbeing and hence productivity. There is also increasing evidence that the environmental design of classrooms enhances learning and that green schools bring wider social and economic benefits beyond that of reduced energy consumption.

In this book academics and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines provide a survey of research into buildings, epidemiology and medical issues, followed by an assessment of the tools available to the practitioner. The book goes on to provide clear guidance on putting theory into practice. This will be a powerful reference source and a compelling read for a wide range of built environment and health professionals from surveyors to environmental health officers.

The embedding of energy efficiency practices within the management of housing organisations will be crucial if current, ambitious national energy efficiency policies are to be realised. This issues is examined for the first time in this book through selected case studies on new 'green' buildings, as well as on the retrofitting and maintenance of existing housing. The book is primarily concerned with how energy efficiency goals are carried forward in investment decisions at the housing estate level. The links between policy, practice and housing organisations are examined in detail, and technical and financial issues are also addressed. The authors combine a wealth of experience in comparative research on housing policy and housing management with a strong academic background in housing studies and economics. A chapter is devoted to each of the following countries: Sweden; Denmark; Germany; the Netherlands; Engl France; Switzerl Austria; Czech Republic; Slovenia and Canada. The book will appeal globally to students and academics who are concerned with housing issues, urban policy and governance as well as to those engaged in research in energy efficiency policies in the built environment. Book jacket.

In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold towarm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what hecalls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and inparticular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins ofarchitecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops atheoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier,from the mechanical and organic to time and entropy. Galiano points out that energy, so important tothe origin of architectural theory in Vitruvius's time, has been absent from architectural theorysince the introduction of the "dictatorship of the eye" over that of the skin. With Fire and Memory,he reintroduces energy to the discussion of architecture and reminds us that the sense of touch isas necessary to an understanding of the environment as the sense of sight.

Focusing upon energy conservation and the built environment, this book engages with areas of debate and policy currently dominated by techno logists and natural scientists. Based upon empirical research, the boo k develops a sociological analysis of the science and technology of su stainability and energy efficiency.