Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design [Paperback]

Ken Yeang (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470997788 | ISBN-13: 978-0470997789 | Publication Date: June 3, 2008

You'll find clear instructions on how to design, build and use a green sustainable architecture in Ecodesign. Author Ken Yeang will show you how to produce and maintain ecosystem-like structures and systems whose content and outputs not only integrate benignly with the natural environment, but whose built form and systems function with sensitivity to the locality's ecology as well in relation to global biospheric processes. He will help you learn to develop structures and systems that are low consumers of non-renewable resources, built with materials that have low ecological consequences and are designed to facilitate disassembly, continuous reuse and recycling, and that at the end of their useful lives can be reintegrated seamlessly back into the natural environment. Each of these aspects, and other attendant ones, is examined in detail with regards to how they influence design and planning.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...stuffed full of solid practical advice and fascinating statistics...I would recommend that everybody downs tools until they have read this." (House & Garden, November 2008)

From the Back Cover

A highly informative and comprehensive manual on ecological design, Ecodesign demonstrates why our current approach to design and perception of architecture must now change radically if our planet is to have a sustainable future. All our artifacts, from buildings to everyday household products, have some environmental impact and can be viewed as potential waste. Ken Yeang argues for a design that seamlessly and benignly integrates with the natural environment – and shows how this can be achieved. The ultimate aim being, artifacts that can have positive consequences for the environment.

The book gives easy-to-follow instructions, accompanied by numerous illustrations, on how to design, build, manufacture and use green sustainable architecture and products. The goal is a built environment that is a low consumer of non-renewable resources, built with green materials, constructed with minimal negative consequences on the site’s ecology and designed to facilitate disassembly, continuous reuse, recycling and eventual benign reintegration into the ecosystems at the end of its useful life.

Ecodesign emphasises the ecologist’s concept of the ecosystem and how this can impact design and planning. Yeang’s theories, ideas and solutions rank him among the foremost up-to-date thinkers on the subject worldwide.

Aside from designers, Ecodesign is intended as a resource, both theoretical and practical, for academics and students in the discipline and for all those engaged in allied trades and construction who seek to understand and to incorporate green ideas into their working practices. The book provides everyone with a vital guiding framework for changing society’s present profligate, high-energy, environmentally destructive economy into one that is sustainable and eco-based.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470997788
• ISBN-13: 978-0470997789
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #694,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where are the drawings?, January 27, 2008

By 

Rachel Smith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design (Hardcover)

I love ken's "rethinking the skyscraper" There is so much description in the diagrams and drawings etc. This book is difficult because there is so much to read and not as many diagrams to explain the ideas. THe ideas are complex and i just wish there was more information to clarify.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good and technical, July 14, 2007

By 

J. T. Solheim "tycho" (Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design (Hardcover)

It is a good and very complete book on the subject. It looks at all the aspects of eco-architecture, but maybe a bit to dificult to read if you are not specialy interested in the subject. It has given me a lot of new thoughts and ideas. Very good indeed.

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex & useful as well as a pleasant & readable book, May 21, 2007

By 

Francisco J. Guerra "eupalinos" (México, D.F. Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design (Hardcover)

«Ecodesign, a manual for ecological design», is a complex & useful as well as a pleasant & readable book. The approach followed by Ken Yeang and the structure of the book makes it useful for those interested in sustainability as well as professional designers. Premises & strategies --some of them subject of debate-- are presented in a non-dogmatic fashion, allowing the reader to form its own opinion, thus contributing to build new knowledge on the subject. Chapter B, Design Instructions, the core of the book, is precisely a toolbox that guides the reader in a step by step set of directions that assist designers & planners to make the relevant decisions in the ecological design process, far beyond the concept of green buildings. The book has been very useful to us as socioeconomic & regional planners, allowing not also to determine the main guidelines for a regional strategic plan, but also to determine the specific criteria that should be applied in the specific design at the urban & building levels. The book is much more than a useful tool, it is a «landmark» in the field of sustainability, a much needed line of thought in the world of today, if we want to have a world tomorrow.