Design for the Environment

By Dorothy Mackenzie; Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 300 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010. 176 pages, hardcover. $35.

Design for the Environment by Dorothy Mackenzie is a gallery of environmental design solutions, mostly from Europe. The book covers an extremely broad range of topics, including building design, transportation, packaging of consumer products, and textiles. As a result, it is necessarily a bit sketchy in its handling of many of these topics. The striking photographs that illustrate each item described help to make up for that sketchiness, however, and the book is a colorful introduction to the world of environmentally appropriate design.

The book’s strongest part is its opening chapter on global environmental issues. This introduction to the problems is thorough and informative without getting sensational. The rest of the text touches on the overriding issues affecting each type of design, while the graphics, with detailed captions, provide anecdotal examples of various solutions.

Less than a quarter of the book addresses building design directly, so if you’re looking for detailed material about buildings, you may be disappointed. Several building design case studies provide some innovative ideas, but the limited space allotted to each makes it difficult to really get a sense for how the buildings work. Some of the non-building related topics may also be of interest to builders and architects. An attractive German design for glass-collection “igloos” is one example, and a handsome graphic showing the inner workings of the Ifö water-saving toilet is another.

On the whole,

Design for the Environment is a bit pricey, but it may be a good choice for those interested in the broader concepts of environmentally sound design.