Environmental Design: An Introduction for Architects and Engineers. - book reviews

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1996 by Sean Mulcahy

Edited by Randall Thomas. London: E. and F. N. Spon. 1996. 19.99 [pounds sterling]

This most readable volume comprehensively reviews environmental design elements in 10 chapters, edited and mostly written by Randall Thomas, with five case studies by other members of Max Fordham & Partners. Each chapter concludes with guidelines, all succinct, some naive, and is generously referenced while further readings are suggested. (The publications of BSRIA could warrant greater notice.)

The best known of the case study buildings is the De Montfort University Engineering Building, notable for its far-reaching natural ventilation systems. The Fordham practice has been a forerunner in exploring what might be termed `moderate solutions' to environmental problems -- and opportunities -- posed by function, site, budget and/or building form and this book is much to its credit. The mission is a well balanced mix of values, architectural and engineering, form and performance, judgement and calculation. If anything, perhaps the emphasis is over-much on `low-tech' rather than the still moderate but more open values of `appropriate technology' -- for `appropriate' now read `sustainable'. An extract fan is a low-cost, compact, controllable device compared to Montfort's towers. Equally, the electric lamp enables much in times and places that sun and sky cannot effectively or economically reach.

Architect Edward Cullinan's brief foreword marks the need for environmentally `responsive expressionism' -- akin, perhaps, to Kant's `the significant to be apparent' -- and rightly finds this book to be an important contribution. It is a book for all designers, for all seasons.