Sustainable Design: Ecology, Architecture, and Planning challenges professionals to rethink architecture and to see their projects not as objects but as critical, connected pieces of the whole, essential to human health as well as to regional economy and ecology.

Comprehensive in scope, Sustainable Design answers key questions such as:

• How do I begin thinking and designing ecologically?
• What is the difference between "green design" and "sustainable design"?
• What are some examples of effective change I can make that will have the most impact for the least cost?

Written for architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers, public officials, and change agent professionals, this important resource defines the issues of sustainable design, illustrates conceptual and case studies, and provides support for continued learning in this increasingly central focus of architects' and urban planners' work.

Williams's book features winning projects from the first decade of the AIA's Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten award program.

Contents

1. The Ecological Model

• Ecology
• Ecology as a Model
• Waste Debts
• The Value of Land
• Paradigm Shift
• Thinking as a System: Connectivity not Fragmentation

2. Sustainable Design

• Where Do We Want To Go?
• Design Matters
• Why Architects?
• Green Design vs. Sustainable Design
• Why Now?
• Place-Based Energy & Resources
• Approaching Sustainability
• Principles for Designing Sustainably
• Where to Start?

3. Design of Regions

• Evolving from Non-Renewables
• Another Weak Link: The Power Grid
• The Design of Regions
• Water: A Common Denominator
• Make No Small Plans
• The Regional Design Process
• Case Studies Florida; Minnesota; Utah

4. Urban and Community Design

• A Matter of Place
• Principles for Sustainable Communities
• Biourbanism
• Case Studies: Arizona; Florida; Minnesota

5. Architecture

• The Site, the Place: Challenges and Opportunities
• Site Design and Environmental Analysis
• Sustainable Infrastructure
• The Skin
• Evolving a Sustainable Design Practice
• Sustainable Design and Existing Buildings. AIA Headquarters - Washington, DC
• Sustainable Interior Architecture

6. AIA/COTE Top Ten 1997-2005

Sustainable Terms
Index

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