Precedented Environmental Futures: Skin and Substance
This book addresses the built environment through the lens of environmental architecture, and in a holistic manner. It moves gradually from psychophysiology and thinking-doing-feeling modalities, through environmental criteria to environmental modulation, concluding with a debate around mitigation and adaptation.
Much use is made of re-interpreting past quotations seen as relevant for environmental architecture. No definitive conclusions are reached, but rather broad discursive messages are offered. The text will have lasting luminance for new generations involved with the built environment.
Professor Colin Porteous, formerly a full-time academic (1986-2006), still works part-time on both research and teaching at the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art, UK. His publications include The NEW eco-ARCHITECTURE (2002) and Solar Architecture in Cool Climates (2005).
"This book represents a lifetime’s work from the author. It primarily re-examines key literature and case studies mostly related to 19th and 20th century environmental architecture to develop a more nuanced set of precepts for designers to follow. There is no attempt to present a definitive approach to environmental design. Instead, Colin Porteous presents a ‘bricolage’ (to use Colin Rowe’s definitive term) of insights, which provide an improvised platform of various ideas for others to work with. There is wisdom in this approach, as it avoids the artificial boundaries that many ‘green guides to architecture’ have created for themselves by defining very specific criteria and methods. Instead, it allows the reader to engage with an ongoing conversation with the author along a journey of examination and reflection.[...] there is a wealth of wisdom and understanding within all the careful analysis presented which rewards a careful reading, making this a valuable addition to canon of literature on environmental architecture and a core reference for 20th Century modernism as seen through the eyes of a consummate environmental architect, researcher – and teacher."
Professor Fionn Stevenson, University of Sheffield
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