Summary

Green design is the major architectural movement of our time. Throughout the world architects are producing sustainable buildings in an attempt to preserve the environment and our globe's natural resources. However, current strategies for forming sustainable solutions are typically too general and fail to take advantage of critical geographical, environmental, and cultural factors particular to a specific place. By focusing on the Pacific Northwest, this book provides essential lessons to architects and students on how sustainable architecture can and should be shaped by the unique conditions of a region.

Pacific Northwest regionalism has consistently supported an architecture aimed at environmental needs and priorities. This book illuminates the history of a "green trail" in the work of key architects of the Northwest. It discusses environmental strategies that work in the region, organized according to nature's most basic elements--earth, air, water, and fire--and their underlying principles and forces. The book focuses on technologies, materials, and methods, with a final section that examines thirteen exceptional Northwest buildings in detail and in light of their contributions to sustainable architecture.

Critical case studies by Northwest architects illustrate some of the best environmental design work in North America. Notable architects from Seattle, Portland, and British Columbia are included. These projects feature innovative design in water and site stewardship, intelligent technologies, passive energy strategies, ecologically sound building materials, and environmentally sensitive energy management systems.

Choice Review

A presentation of arguments for and recent examples of sustainable design in the architecture of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, this is a study of current environmentally friendly trends in the region. After a brief account of such trends from Native American structures through the Arts and Crafts movement and early Northwest modernism, Miller, an architect who also teaches at the University of Washington, presents various case studies by his firm and a number of others. Using the rubric of the four elements--earth, fire, air, and water--as environmental strategies, as he calls them, Miller discusses and illustrates the site considerations, the use of sunlight (both direct and filtered by clouds) for light and heat, the employment of air for cooling and circulation, and the utilization and absorption of water. Significantly, he also discusses how well these strategies have worked, their consequences, and problems that still remain to be solved. A well-designed and beautifully illustrated volume, this is primarily an argument for ecologically friendly approaches, appealing especially to architects and prospective clients, for both individual houses and a variety of public commissions. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals; two-year technical program students. D. Stillman emeritus, University of Delaware