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A new book from IHS BRE Press charts a path for sustainable construction.

There is an urgent need for radical and widespread change in construction that not only concentrates on cutting carbon emissions and leaving a positive

building legacy for generations to come, but that also demonstrates an increased harmony with the natural world. A new book from IHS BRE Press by Mischa Hewitt and Kevin Telfer, Earthships ? Building a Zero Carbon Future for Homes, shows how earthships provide valuable lessons on how to achieve all three of these goals.

Architecture is changing rapidly as climate change is more widely understood to be a pressing issue and the need to cut carbon emissions in buildings increases. The earthship is a building concept that has evolved over the last 30 years and represents a pioneering form of zero carbon residential building that tackles a variety of sustainability issues.

In ?Earthships: Building a Zero Carbon Future for Homes,? Hewitt and Telfer describe important lessons for the design of sustainable architecture and examine the legislative and regulatory culture that has an impact on the construction of earthships. Their purpose is to realign thinking in architecture and construction to accept the sustainability techniques used in earthships as essential for the future.

The book charts the building of the first earthships in the UK and their relevance to home building and architecture generally. It offers lessons about sustainable architecture and about the legislative and regulatory culture that affects their construction by looking at energy, water, building with waste, and construction methods, and assessing the future of these buildings.

Kevin McCloud, writes in the Foreword:
?I salute this survey of the experimental and the innovative, of ?first adopters? and adventurers who inform the wider world with their exploits. They are the heroes of the construction world and this book is a fitting tribute.?

About the authors

Mischa Hewitt is the project manager of the Earthship Brighton project, director of the Low Carbon Trust (www.lowcarbon.co.uk), and director of a green building specialist company Earthwise Construction (www.earthwiseconstruction.org), and is also involved in various other environmental projects.

Kevin Telfer is a freelance journalist and author. He is the author, with Kevin McCloud, of the book ?Grand designs abroad?, which accompanied the Channel 4 TV series, and has written for several architecture and building magazines, and the national press. He has recently completed a book about the history of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

Earthships ? Building a Zero Carbon Future for Homes
Mischa Hewitt and Kevin Telfer
IHS BRE Press, Bracknell, August 2007
ISBN 978-1-86081-972-8, Paperback, over 100 colour illustrations, 246 x 189 mm, 146 pages, ?25.00

by: Editor

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