Green by Design: Creating a Home for Sustainable Living

by Angela M. Dean

"Dare to dream," says architect Angela M. Dean, who specializes in green home design. In this book, she tells you the best way to achieve your dream of a sustainable home, including how to plan, pitfalls to avoid, and the numerous ways you can take advantage of natural resources and materials. There is no one-size-fits-all plan for designing a home, and this book includes plans and full-color photographs of more than a dozen case studies to show you haw varied the solutions for successful sustainable homes can be.

You'll also learn about the many materials and systems you can incorporate into your home so that it has less impact on the environment and provides a healthier living space for you and your family. The book provides information on:

*Natural building materials
*Renewable flooring
*Gray water for landscaping
*Local materials and labor
*Energy-efficient systems
*Passive solar design
*Indoor air quality

Packed with information and resources, Green by Design is the perfect book for anyone interested in creating a home for sustainable living.

Genres: Sustainability, Nonfiction

134 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2003

Reviews

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great starting point for people who are starting the process of designing a new sustainable home and don't already have experience in either home design or sustainable design. As an architect, there wasn't a ton of new information in the book for me, but I would definitely recommend it to a friend or client who is just starting the design process. The first several chapters are really more about how to go about designing any home and way to think about the type of home that you want to live in, which I would recommend for anyone starting the design process, sustainable or not. The last two chapters start getting more into specifically sustainable design practices, but in a very high level way. The Resources section at the end of the book is a good starting point once you have finished reading the book.

The author clearly shows her own biases in term of the best ways to build sustainably through the case studies. While overall I agree with her approach and think that the case studies serve to demonstrate ways of building a sustainable home, a person not as familiar with sustainable design should consider that there are ways to build sustainably using more conventional methods, depending on what your goals are.

The title of the book is a little misleading I think, and if you are looking for a book that you can use as a guide for how to make your existing home more green, then this is not really the book for you. If you are thinking of renovating your home or building a new home and want to do so in a sustainable way, then this book is a great place to start.

[Caro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty neat book. It requires some reading but it has some good pictures too. I liked the different options it introduced and the factors that were listed to be considered before deciding anything. There were a lot of things that were presented in this book that I'll have to research more but made good impressions on me. I liked the examples or 'cases' that were included and the how/what/why that's incorporated in the study. It let me know some of the reasoning behind the choices and that some things are good for certain areas/climates that may not be in others. This was a good starting point type of book that introduces ideas and basics to follow up on. Overall a pretty good and informational read. Enjoy

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. It was not very useful for the average person.

[K. Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very information--used it more for names of architects and contractors. Did give me a lot to think about.