Monday, June 17, 2013

Green book review - The Greenest Home: Superinsulated and Passive House Design by Julie Torres Moskovitz

Making buildings more sustainable is one of the more interesting developments that we're witnessing in the last couple of years. Our book today focuses on one of the latest developments in this area - passive houses.

The book we review today is:

The Greenest Home: Superinsulated and Passive House Design By Julie Torres Moskovitz (publisher: Princeton Architectural Press)

What this book is about?

Passive is the new green. Passive Houses, well–insulated, virtually airtight buildings, can decrease home heating consumption by an astounding ninety percent, making them not only an attractive choice for current and prospective homeowners, but also the right choice for a sustainable future. The Greenest Home showcases eighteen of the world's most attractive Passive Houses by forward-thinking architects such as Bernheimer Architecture, Olson Kundig Architects, and Onion Flats, among many others. Each case study consists of a detailed project description, plans, and photographs. Including a mix of new construction and retrofit projects built in a variety of site conditions, The Greenest Home is an inspiring sourcebook for architects and prospective homeowners, as well as a useful tool for students, and builders alike.


Our review:
This is one of those books that you sit down and read the first time. Then you see it sitting on the counter and you flip through it. Then you walk by it another day and page around in it again. The ideas are contempory and fun. The materials green and environmentally sound. The pictures and the plans are well organized. Paging through this book there are so many ideas that catch your eye and make you want to pop onto the wagon of green homes. The storage ideas and the organization, the lighting aspects, the vaulted ceilings and baboon materials, made me drool with desire. Then….you look into prices and that idea goes out the window.

First, there are no pricing lists in this book. If you are interested you have to hunt down the materials and put together a price list of your own. I found that a bit tedious. I think most people wouldn’t get that far. The only reason I did, was I was curious if it was affordable to go green in this fashion. Most all the homes in this book were huge. Maybe if they cut them down in size a bit, it would be more cost effective for the regular every day person.

Regardless of the pricing, the homes are beautiful both inside and out. The indexing is complete and easy to use as it is broken down by home. I have not yet regaled this book to the shelf. It still sits out in the living area for me to continually flip through and dream.


You can purchase the book here.

Yours,


Thursday, June 6, 2013

A new book in Hebrew, The Main one by Inbal Malka is going green with Eco-Libris!























We are very happy to announce on our collaboration with Israeli author Inbal Malka to green up her debut novel 'The Main One' - 250 Trees will be planted with Eco-Libris for the first edition of this exciting novel!

The Main One is the third book in Hebrew we're working with after My Cup of Tea  and Natanya - both written by Dror Burstein. We are delighted to have books in Hebrew as part of the growing list of languages of books we work with, which includes among others Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Italian and English.


You can purchase The Main One here.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris
Plant a tree for every book you read!