The book Mannahatta, a Natural History of NYC by Eric Sanderson was the best book I read in 2009, and I must have read 40 green building books. For weeks after reading it I walked around New York in a daze, spellbound by the historical tapestry the book had woven of my surroundings. If you […]
One aspect of green building is about reducing the toxins we use in the building process. For example our green renovations of Brooklyn brownstones use no toxic glues (Liquid Nails, for example). Our meter is that if a child can’t be in the room while we are doing it then we aren’t interested in doing
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Did you know that in addition to carbon dioxide, humans release as much as 150 volatile substances from our bodies, including carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, phenol, and hydrogen sulphide?! I got this from the book “How To Grow Fresh Air – 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office” by Dr. Wolverton. Since we
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Diana Wells’ book “Lives of the Trees” is a veritable folkloric historical encyclopedia for the common folk about trees. If you ever wondered what the Apple tree had in common with Shakespeare, where the tree originated, what political impact it has had on Europe, and why the Golden Delicious is just a marketing name after
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The book “New Green Homes” by Sergi Costa Duran, Liliana Bollini and Ethel Pohl is a focused book. It is an architects visual study of modern homes around the world. They claim the homes are green but I didn’t really see that. What I did see was a study of a very specific architectural style,
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This book has a long title: Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs. But then again it is a big book. Written by Tim Callahan and Clarke Snell this book overflows with 600 pages and 1500 images. The book aims
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The book “The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty” by Robyn Griggs Lawrence attempts to bring the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi to the American homeowner. Firstly Wabi-Sabi, like the Zen culture it comes from, is hard to describe even in Japanese. How do you describe the sound of one hand clapping? But trying
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The book of short essays “Less is More” collected by Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska, tackles a subject dear to my heart: Voluntary Simplicity, the act of voluntarily making your life simpler, less cluttered, more frugal and quite simply… simpler. I don’t think the book does a very good job at it though. Firstly, a
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The book “Brooklyn Modern” by Diana Lind, published by Rizzoli, is a real inspiration to any green builder or contractor in Brooklyn because it shows great examples of creative, green renovations of Brooklyn buildings. Most of the renovations are not intentionally green, although some are, but the home owners are part of a Brooklyn breed
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There is a little book called “Simple Shelters: Tents, Tipis, Yurts, Domes and other Ancient Homes” by Jonathan Horning. It is part of a group of books called Wooden Books that the NY publisher Walker & Company puts out. From the web site, Wooden Books are Small Books with Big Ideas: “Historically, in all known
