The Barefoot Architect: A Handbook for Green. Building. Johan van Lengen. RRP
$37.95. ISBN 9780936070421. Published by Shelter Publications (2008).
Spanish language edition sold 200,000 copies and the Mexican government bought copies for every library in Mexico. There are no palaces, no cathedrals or self-conscious architectural fashion statements in this amazing book. Every page is directed at the owner builder with clear drawings to analyse and illustrate the thought behind a building. The techniques described are derived from the favellas and poor rural areas of South America filtered through the mind and pen of a brilliant educator. While many vernacular practices are illustrated they can be combined with modern technology where this is available. Owner builders will appreciate the chapter on how to design a house. From how to make a drawing, making models, choosing dimensions, analysing the solar pattern, wind, and slope for siting. Then the relationship between rooms and the placement of doors and windows. To quote ‘One way to be sure about the placement of windows is to build the walls half a metre high, walk around inside the house, and then decide on their most suitable location and size.’ There is an understanding of the task of
The Barefoot Architect: A Handbook for Green Building Johan van Lengen RRP $37.95. ISBN 9780936070421 Published by Shelter Publications (2008) Distributed by Woodslane 697 pages, black and white illustrations • REVIEW BY BRUCE GIFFORD • This book is a pictorial handbook of sustainable building. Johan van Lengen is a Canadian architect who founded the Bio-Architecture and Intuitive Technology School in Brazil where there are workshops on housing, sanitation, communication and town planning. The
building without professional help and trying to get everything right. There are separate chapters for humid tropics, dry tropics and temperate zones with suggestions for house shape, ventilation, heating and pests. While the reader may have no immediate need to make a roof covering using palm leaves, or sinks and toilets using only soil and cement, it is nice to know it is possible if one had to. There are drawings for composting toilets, a bamboo-cement water reservoir, filter and irrigation systems, stoves and kilns, to name just a few. There is much information on adobe building, with construction details, recommended mixes, renders, domes and vaults. There are designs for wind turbines, water mills and intriguingly, a welder using 18 litres of water and 5kg of salt. The energy capacity of the welder depends on the depth of the metal rods in the water. This apparently technical book is immensely readable, with its encyclopaedic scope, concise explanatory text and drawings, and obviously founded on practical experience. I
EXTRACT FROM THE BAREFOOT ARCHITECT
ROOF VENTILATION OPENINGS
B Prevent hot air from entering the room:
One way to prevent the house interior from heating up is to build openings in the upper part of the walls or in the roof. Since hot air always rises, these openings provide exits for the heat. There are three ways to ventilate: A Allow interior hot air to exit:
the hot air flows into the eaves and exits through openings near the ridge
Example of method B: to let in cool outside air, the interior air must be evacuated
another type of opening near the ridge
Examples of method A: the hot air exits through openings in the upper walls
C Draw hot air between the roof and the top of wall: with a flat roof the breeze lifts the air that is stagnant beneath the eaves
Example of method C: the hot air exits through roof openings © www.theownerbuilder.com.au • 0402 428 123
the breeze enters through holed tiles in the upper part of the walls THE OWNER BUILDER • 166 August/September 2011 • 61
See opp o an extra site for ct f this boo rom k
Diary of an Eco-builder Will Anderson RRP $44.95. ISBN 9781903998793 Published by Green Books (2006) Distributed by Brumby Books 256 pages, colour photographs • REVIEW BY ROB HADDEN • In some ways this is a rather extraordinary little book documenting the day to day minutiae of building an ‘eco’ house in London – and yet it seems pitched at the converted and possibly missing a bigger audience who probably need to know what this book is all about. Will Anderson is rather big in the UK ‘eco’ business and when he decided to build his dream house, he chose to document the entire process from start to finish as he turned his vision of a super efficient and sustainable building into reality. Many of the problems that come about when you build like this are dealt with in a step-by-step fashion and he doesn’t shy away from the difficult issues. Somehow, in the middle of London in Clapham, a small plot of land became available for building on and Will immediately decided on this as the place to live his dream. Given the lack of any land to build on in London, it was now or never. Probably the single biggest influence was the huge tree that dominated the block and this became the inspiration to design the house using the tree as metaphor for the construction of the building. The tree also provided much needed natural shade for the house. To build so close to the tree meant driving great piles of concrete down instead of deep trenches and then overlaying them with the slab. Enormous amounts of concrete were
used and Will seems to think this is OK in the bigger picture. From these standard beginnings it rapidly alters pace and direction to concentrate on the more environmental concerns and of the sheer cost of building this way in the city. As he notes at the end – there is an enormous cost both fiscally and in the profligate use of energy to make all the material goods needed to save energy in the future. This house has all of that in bucket loads. This is a serious high tech house with enough technology to put man/woman on the moon! Some of the subjects covered (and there are so many) are: costs of living green, future proofing, air tightness, ultra low heat homes, heat pumps, climate sensitive design, indirect energy consumption, high tech vs. low tech, paints, lime, steel and scrap, electronic goods, windows and so on. All the usual suspects are covered as well. But this is more than just a day to day diary and Will also includes lists of resources, design details, profiles of builders and artisans and other craftspeople involved that give a much
more human side to all that intense building activity. In true Grand Designs form, this project went over time and over budget and certainly had its stresses and strains and ‘why did I ever start moments.’ But through it all, Will stuck to his vision and in the end he triumphed as the three story leviathan stood proud next to its original inspiration that survived all the frantic activity that went on around it. At the end of this project Will muses on the thoughts of a small cob house in Scotland where no technology is used to achieve the same visions he had for his inner city house and thinks that in the future this may be the way to go. For now he believes that in the city it will require the costly high tech solutions to work and perhaps he is right... This is an intelligently written book and one that can turn the day to day drudgery of building into an amusing and informative narrative. For anyone wanting to build more sensitively in an urban environment, this book is well worth handing over some folding stuff for. If nothing else it is inspirational... I
Homes for a changing climate: Adapting our homes and communities to cope with the climate of the 21st C Will Anderson RRP $75.00. ISBN 9781900322478 Published by Green Books (2009). Distributed by Brumby Books 192 pages, colour photographs • REVIEW BY ROB HADDEN • This handy little tome by Will Anderson is looking at how humanity has always built for the climate and habitat and how this pattern of building has to be rediscovered in the 21st C. Climate change is upon us now and as it changes so must we adapt to it. The basic message this book conveys is this: the human race has been there before and we have known what to do. Now we do not and we have to confront these environmental threats. Across the globe are countless examples of how humanity has adapted and thrived by utilising our own resources, adaptability
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and with a large dollop of imagination. Each chapter deals with one of the earths natural climactic events such as heat waves, floods, storms, drought, threatened coastal regions and the related matters like food security, futureproofing and energy security. In some ways I found this book to be even better than ‘Diary of an Ecobuilder’ as it goes beyond just stuffing insulation in the walls and roof and making your house air-tight – it goes to the nub of the problem and asks how are we going to survive if it all goes pear shaped? For most of the western world that relies on fast food and gas heating, that means you! I © www.theownerbuilder.com.au • 0402 428 123
