Get the updated guide to active and passive control systems for buildings. To capitalize on today's rapidly evolving, specialized technologies, architects, designers, builders, and contractors work together to plan the mechanical and electrical equipment that controls the indoor environment of a building. The Building Environment: Active and Passive Control Systems, Third Edition helps you take advantage of design innovations and construction strategies that maximize the comfort, safety, and energy efficiency of buildings. From active HVAC systems to passive methods, lighting to on-site power generation, this updated edition explains how to strategically plan for and incorporate effective, efficient systems in today's buildings. It covers the underlying thermal theories and thermodynamic principles and focuses on design that enhances the building environment and minimizes the impact on the world's environment. The Building Environment goes beyond the ABCs of HVAC and covers: On-site power generation, including wind turbines, solar photovoltaic cells, fuel cells, and more. Plumbing systems, fire protection, signal systems, conveying systems, and architectural acoustics. Procedures and/or formulas for performing heat loss, heat gain, and energy use calculations, determining the rate of heat flow, calculating solar energy utilization, doing load calculations, and more. Details on the latest building codes and standards references. New information on the sustainable design of building systems and energy efficiency, including new technologies. The latest thinking and data on a building's impact on the environment, indoor air quality, and "sick building syndrome." Design economics, including the payback period, life-cycle cost, comparative value analysis, and building commissioning. A practical on-the-job tool for architects, designers, builders, engineers, contractors, and other specialists, this Third Edition is also a great reference for architecture students who will lead tomorrow's design teams.

This book takes a sweeping view of the ways we build things, beginning at the scale of products and interiors, to that of regions and global systems. In doing so, it answers questions on how we effect and are affected by our environment and explores how components of what we make—from products, buildings, and cities—are interrelated, and why designers and planners must consider these connections.

When it comes to architecture, there has been a focus on sustainable buildings and human well-being in the built environment. Buildings should not only be environmentally friendly and sustainable, but dually focused on human health, wellness, and experience. This includes considerations into the quality of buildings, ranging from ventilation to thermal comfort, along with environment considerations such as energy usage and material selection. Specific architectural choices and design for buildings can either contribute to or negatively impact both society and the environment, leading research in the field of architecture to be focused on environmental and societal well-being in accordance with the built environment. The Research Anthology on Environmental and Societal Well-Being Considerations in Buildings and Architecture focuses on how the built environment is being constructed to purposefully enhance societal well-being while also maintaining green standards for environmental sustainability. On one side, this book focuses on the specific building choices that can be made for the purpose of human well-being and the occupants who will utilize the building. On the other side, this book also focuses on environmental sustainability from the standpoint of green buildings and environmental concerns. Together, these topics allow this book to have a holistic view of modern architectural choices and design. This book is essential for architects, IT professionals, engineers, contractors, environmentalists, interior designers, civil planners, regional government officials, construction companies, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in architecture and how it can promote environmental and societal well-being.

Sustainable Built Environment is a component of Encyclopedia of Technology, Information, and Systems Management Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. Environmental conservation and technological innovation are two principal forces that drive the building industry toward the future. Technological innovation offers many opportunities to make buildings more dynamic and comfortable, and occupants more comfortable and productive. The necessity of environmental conservation, on the other hand, compels all types of developments and human activities to be environmentally responsive. The content of the Theme on Sustainable Built Environment is organized with state-of-the-art presentations covering several topics: Urban Design ; Emerging Issues in Building Design; Environment, Energy and Health in Housing Design; Culture, Management Strategies, and Policy Issues in the Sustainable Built Environment; Using Technology to Improve the Quality of City Life; Urban and Regional Transportation, which are then expanded into multiple subtopics, each as a chapter. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

Sustainable Design for the Built Environment marks the transition of sustainable design from a specialty service to the mainstream approach for creating a healthy and resilient built environment. This groundbreaking and transformative approach introduces sustainable design in a clear, concise, easy-to-read format. This book takes the reader deep into the foundations of sustainable design, and creates a holistic and integrative approach addressing the social, cultural, ecological, and aesthetic aspects in addition to the typical performance-driven goals. The first section of the book is themed around the origins, principles, and frameworks of sustainable design aimed at inspiring a deeper, broader, and more inclusive view of sustainability. The second section examines strategies such as biophilia and biomimicry, adaptation and resilience, health and well-being. The third section examines the application of sustainability principles from the global, urban, district, building, and human scale, illustrating how a systems thinking approach allows sustainable design to span the context of time, space, and varied perspectives. This textbook is intended to inspire a new vision for the future that unites human activity with natural processes to form a regenerative, coevolutionary model for sustainable design. By allowing the reader an insightful look into the history, motivations, and values of sustainable design, they begin to see sustainable design, not only as a way to deliver green buildings, but as a comprehensive and transformative meta-framework that is so needed in every sector of society. Supported by extensive online resources including videos and PowerPoints for each chapter, this book will be essential reading for students of sustainability and sustainable design.

One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experience Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs. By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes, infrastructure, and urban areas. Going forward, we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting, overstimulating environments and enervating, understimulating ones. Buildings, landscapes, and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light, greenery, and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough, and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces, and careful, well-executed construction details are just as important. Erudite, wise, lucidly written, and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, Welcome to Your World is a vital, eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit, physically and mentally, and a clarion call to design for human experience.

This well-illustrated 'think piece' provides a much needed and topical philosophical introduction to the place of environmental design in architecture. The Environments of Architecture sets out a range of considerations necessary to produce appropriate internal environments in the context of a wider discussion on the effect of building decisions on the broader environment. The authors, from architecture and engineering, academia and practice, provide a rounded and well-balanced introduction to this important topic. Starting from a belief that the built environment can contribute more positively to the planet and the pleasure of places as well as answering the practical demands of comfort, they cover site planning, form, materials, construction and operation as well as looking at design on a city level. Presenting a thoughtful and stimulating approach to the built environment, this book forms an excellent guide for practitioners, students and academics concerned with our built environment.