Place-Specific Design: Architecture for Visible Sustainability

Place-Specific Design: Architecture for Visible Sustainability promotes a visibly sustainable architectural approach that is rooted in place. As a direct response to the sustainability crisis and homogenizing effect of globalization, visibly sustainable architecture seeks to reverse the ongoing loss of diversity in all senses of the word. As place-specific design, it identifies and restores the ecological and cultural characteristics that give places their unique character. Examples drawn from prominent firms worldwide, including Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Steven Holl Architects, Glenn Murcutt Architects, Foster + Partners, Herzog & de Meuron, and Ateliers Jean Nouvel, demonstrate the diverse and highly innovative solutions that emerge from insightful consideration of local culture and ecology, enhanced by the appropriate use of modern technologies. Place-Specific Design maps out a blueprint for how the socially-conscious architect can contribute to the promotion of a "non-autonomous" architecture: architecture that reunites nature and human nature in an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship.