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The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for
Schematic Design (Architectural Press, 2007) by Alison G.
Kwok, AIA, and Walter T. Grondzik, PE
Review by Margot McDonald, AIA
The Green Studio Handbook is a welcome addition to the
tool kit of any design professional who knows the basics of
architectural thermal, lighting, water, and waste systems and is
ready to apply these concepts to building design. The strategy of
this handbook is clear. It presents green building strategies and
technologies related to building environmental performance in a
descriptive format that readily explains the “what, how, and
how big” of each. As a handbook, it takes a simplified
approach in its organization by breaking green design into six
building block categories: Envelope, Lighting, Heating, Cooling,
Energy Production, and Water & Waste. Each section includes
sample problems, prerequisites, coordination issues, specification
options, intent, effect, LEED® links, and references to related
strategies. The book’s core value can be found in more than
240 pages of design strategies and nine well-developed case studies
that follow. The color photographs, hand sketches, and section cuts
provide a visual text that complements the concisely written
passages. The book is a convincing, confidence builder for
“students” of environmental design who possess a
fundamental curiosity about green building—whether in the
academic or professional studio environment. The book allows
designers to integrate green building concepts during schematic
design when key decisions are made that shape architectural form
and site design.
The authors chose the more bounded definition of green design over
the term sustainable design; limiting the focus mostly to buildings
and their systems. While there are some references to landscape and
site design in the book, the focus on building environmental
performance over social and economic factors makes this a fitting
distinction. To examine additional topics might well be served in a
future edition or imagined as a next book in a series on
sustainable design.
The Green Studio Handbook will complement the libraries of
green architecture students, faculty, and practitioners; finding
its place comfortably side-by-side with other notable resources,
such as Sun, Wind, and Light (2nd edition, Wiley, 2001)
and Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings
(10th edition, Wiley, 2006) amongst others. As a guide, the book
lands somewhere between a workbook and a reference text. The book
is the ideal companion to the green studio complete with an
introductory narrative on integrated design, design strategies,
case studies, a glossary of terms, and bibliography. As such it
fulfills it objectives of providing informed inspiration for green
design.
Margot McDonald, AIA, LEED AP, is a professor of architecture
at California Polytechnic State University–San Luis
Obispo.
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