Urban Green Architecture for the Future

by Chambers, Neil B.

• ISBN13: 9780230107632
• ISBN10: 023010763X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-05
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

Sustainable design is booming, but the men and women dedicated to reducing their carbon impact have lost sight of what they are trying to save: the natural world. Author Neil Chambers has been at the forefront of cutting-edge, sustainable architecture for years, andUrban Greenis his revolutionary vision for bringing the power of the conservation and design movements together. He advocates looking to nature for the missing components of the green revolution: oysters that can clean water at up to 5 liters an hour; beavers that reshape their environments while simultaneously enriching ecosystems; and mountains that offer a new way of imagining how a city could be built. By designing our homes and cities in harmony with the natural world, we can take the next step in the sustainable revolution.

Author Biography

Neil B. Chambers is an award-winning green designer and founder of Chambers Design, Inc. and Green Ground Zero. He serves as an adjunct professor at NYU, teaching green design and environmental policy, and is a national fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program. Chambers has a growing media presence, both in traditional media and the blogosphere, where his blog on Treehugger.com, which is owned by Discovery, has an active following of 90,000 readers. He has also been featured in The Village Voice, Architectural Record, The Sun News and Timeout, and has been interviewed by BBC News, NY1, and Guernica magazine, which called him a “green guru.”

Table of Contents

"Chambers sketches an ambitious way forward for the green building industry. Defining what green building is and how well its goals are being met, he explores where the movement needs to be a century from now." --The Washington Post

“Neil Chambers is a voice of reason and a visionary. Urban Green inspires and empowers us to creatively integrate sustainability into every level of our world - our homes, towns, cities and infrastructure so we can make room for the future of our planet and all things that live on it.”--Dickson Despommier, author of The Vertical Farm

"Neil Chambers has an expert perspective on the deepest of home truths: We are what we live in (and work in), not just what we eat.  Every building, he reminds us, is a pile of choices with implications for planet Earth."--David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo

"Technology meets ecology in Chambers' fascinating exploration of green building's current limitations and the emerging paradigm poised to supersede it."--Josh Dorfman, author of The Lazy Environmentalist

“As the world becomes more urbanized, there is bound to be conflict between our homes and the natural world. Chambers adds insights that are easy for the layman to understand and are told in an entertaining manner. I highly recommend reading this book.”--Peter Fusaro, best-selling author of What Went Wrong at Enron, and Chairman, Global Change Associates

"Where is sustainability going? Let Urban Green point you in the right direction. It's a smart, bold look at the future of green. Full of passion as well as practical information, it declares war on the status quo of doing the bare minimum to go green. If you want a glimpse at a truly revolutionary perspective of how we can truly live in harmony with nature, this is the book."--Graham Hill, founder of treehugger.com and author of Ready, Set, Green

“Buildings, even "green" buildings, have impacts that ripple across the infrastructures of towns, suburbs, and cities. Those ripples also have far-reaching and underappreciated impacts on water, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and wilderness. Like a central stone at the summit of an arch or a predator maintaining biodiversity through strong species interactions, Urban Green is keystone: it melds the art (and science) of building design with the science of biodiversity conservation. A must read for anyone chasing the architecture of the future.”--C. Josh Donlan, Advanced Conservation Strategies & Cornell University. 

“Neil Chambers Urban Green is wide ranging, imaginative, and at times ornery and irreverent.  This is just what we need to help rethink building in our immediate future. Chambers makes clear that orthodoxy about ‘green building’ needs to be contextualized to take into account our development and use of energy, water, and space. More reflection and less impulsive action can go a long way in meeting many goals of an effective green movement.”--Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City