Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design by Suzi Moore McGregor & Nora Burba Trulsson is a beautiful coffee-table style book geared towards individuals who want an attractive and comfortable home that reflects their environmentally conscious lifestyle.
Living Homes offers a tour of over twenty homes built with adobe, rammed earth, straw bale and reclaimed materials from across the USA. Each home featured includes information on the eco-vision of the homeowner or architect and details on the challenges and successes of building green. The gorgeous photographs of Terrence Moore accompany each home’s description. The book’s introduction is by William McDonough.
Each chapter in Living Homes is devoted to a different style of building type. Chapter 1 focuses on adobe-style buildings with stunning residences in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. The Wiggins-Logan residence is an example of how incredibly beautiful a green home can be with a combination of adobe and rammed earth construction and natural materials used throughout the interior. The Wiggins-Logan green adobe home is situated in an intentional community in Longmont, Colorado. The planned community was also designed by the homeowners.
Chapter 2 is all about rammed earth residences. Rammed earth homes have a host of benefits including being hyper-allergenic, energy efficient and also protecting home dwellers from electro-magnetic emissions. Chapter 2 features rammed earth buildings in California, Arizona and Colorado. The Barrio Neighbourhood in Tucson, Arizona, demonstrates how urban buildings can be both visually interesting and good for the environment. In the Barrio Neighbourhood a featured eco-building project is comprised primarily of rammed earth homes with visually-arresting interiors. The rammed earth walls muffle traffic and pedestrian noise while keeping the home cool in the hot Arizona weather.
Straw bale buildings are the focus of Chapter 3. Straw bale homes are becomingly increasingly popular due to low costs for construction and the ability to ‘customize’ and ‘self-build’ with straw. Bale residences in Arizona, Colorado, California, New Mexico and California, are featured in this chapter. The Gannett residence is a Victoria-Style straw bale home built in the National Historic District of Crested Butte, Colorado. Even though the home has many green features (passive solar, reclaimed materials, non-toxic finishings, energy efficient appliances and straw and cotton insulation), the home blends beautifully with the more conventional homes in the neighbourhood.
Reinvented, recycled and high-tech materials are the focus of Chapter 4. This chapter has a variety of different home types from California, Utah, and Texas. The Hunt Residence in Napa, California Is a round home built with Rastra recycled polystyrene walls complete with a solar observatory. The living room features a solar calendar scored into its concrete floor.
Living Homes will inspire and encourage homeowners to move beyond just dreaming about constructing an eco-house to actually building a green home of their very own.
Order this book on Amazon.com Living Homes
Visit: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/
Publisher: Chronicle Books
204 Pages
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