Reshaping the Built Environment: Ecology, Ethics, and Economics

Reshaping the Built Environment:

Edited by Charles Kibert, foreword by EBN’s Alex Wilson. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1999. 350 pages, paperback $27.50, hardcover $45

Reshaping the Built Environment is a sustainable design lecture series in book form. Dr. Charles Kibert invited an impressive slate of speakers to the University of Florida at Gainesville to participate in the Rinker Eminent Scholar Series, and each speaker contributed his or her material as a chapter. The resulting book of detailed investigations covers many of the key topics in the field of green design and construction, and several more that lay the groundwork for this field.

A shortcoming that is perhaps inevitable in any book with multiple authors is that some important aspects of green design are missing, and a few sections are repetitive. On the whole, however, this is one of the more comprehensive overviews on sustainable design that we’ve seen. While the individual chapters vary in level of detail, style, and length, they all have useful insights to share. Topics are divided into three parts:

Part I. Foundations

•

The Promises and Limits of Sustainability by Dr. Charles J. Kibert

•

Ecological Challenge, Human Values of Nature, and Sustainability in the Built Environment by Stephen R. Kellert, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University

•

Environmental Ethics by Sarah van Gelder, editor of

Yes magazine

•

Uneconomic Growth and the Built Environment: In Theory and in Fact by Herman E. Daly, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland

Part II. Content

•

Introduction to Renewable Energy Technologies by Stephen J. Strong, Solar Design Associates

•

Environmentally Responsible Building

Material Selection by Nadav Malin, co-editor of

Environmental Building News

•

Ecological Design, Living Machines, and the Purification of Waters by John Todd, Ocean Arks International

•

Landscape: Source of Life or Liability by John Tillman Lyle, formerly of the California State Polytechnical University in Pomona

•

Construction and demolition Waste: Innovative Assessment and Management by Peter Yost, NAHB Research Center

Part III. Process

•

Building Values by Gail A. Lindsey, Design Harmony

•

Architecture as Pedagogy by David Orr, Oberlin College

•

Biourbanism and Sustainable Urban Planning by Daniel Williams, School of Architecture, University of Miami

•

Creating Greener Communities Through Conservation Subdivision Design by Randall Arendt, Natural Lands Trust

•

Environmentally Superior Buildings from Birth to Death by Thomas E. Graedel, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University

•

Environmental Performance of Buildings: Setting Goals, Offering Guidance, and Assessing Progress by Raymond J. Cole, School of Architecture, University of British Columbia

•

The Chicago Brownfields Initiative by William C. Trumbull, Chicago Department of Environment

•

Sustainable New Towns and Industrial Ecology by Ernest A. Lowe, Indigo Development Div., RPP International

This collection should make an excellent text for courses on sustainable design, and a good reference for practitioners who want ready access to authoritative information.

Among the contributions that stand out is that of John Lyle, founding visionary of the Center for Regenerative Studies at Cal Poly–Pomona, who died not long after delivering his lecture in Gainesville. Lyle’s chapter conveys the core of his book on regenerative design. Appropriately,

Reshaping the Built Environment has been dedicated to him.