Review by Craig Deering, AIA, LEED AP

During the day, Craig Deering leads the architecture department at a small A/E firm in Falls Church, Va. There, like thousands of others, he is trying to do his part to move the A/E/C industry and the world into a sustainable future. At night, he reads his copy of Other Homes and Garbage, the 1975 tome on "designs for self-sufficient living" and is planning to cut his home's fossil fuel consumption by 50 percent without cutting his family's thermal comfort.

As an architect, I probably learned more about surviving climate change from The Day after Tomorrow (a 2004 movie that buries New York City and the most of the United States with the mother of all blizzards courtesy of global climate change) than I did from Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change, a 21st Century Survival Guide (Architectural Press, 2005), written by Sue Roaf with David Crichton and Fergus Nicol. One reason may be that The Day after Tomorrow takes place in the United States, primarily New York, and Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change takes place in the UK, primarily London. I grew up outside of New York City so I know the territory. I have never been to London and this made it hard to relate to the author's examples drawn from London's design and development. I also was relaxed and sitting comfortably on my couch while watching the movie. Certainly, this enhanced comprehension. To read Adapting, I couldn't sit on the couch with the book on the side table under the table lamp like I normally do. I had to get up at 5 a.m. when the house was quiet, refreshed from a full night's sleep, make a strong pot of coffee, drink the strong pot of coffee, sit at the kitchen table, then read and really concentrate.

In a nutshell, this book is a tough read. It is gloomy and scholarly and rambling and full of pages and pages of footnoted summaries of various scientific studies, academic journals, insurance statistics, and government research reports. These are intermixed with recounts of news stories, mostly from the Guardian, a paper in the UK. Also, there is the repeated use of the word "coolth" as in "warmth and coolth." Finding the word "coolth" a bit strange, I searched it on Google. To my delight, I discovered that coolth quite possibly is a real word (origins in Elizabethan English) and a Scabble favorite. This little moment of joy lightened my journey only briefly as I did my best to slog through all the facts, figures, and news reports looking for design inspiration. Unfortunately, I never found it. This book is essentially devoid of coherently presented and inventive strategies for adapting the world's stock of buildings or urban patterns for climate change. This book presents some basic guidance on things like thermal mass and natural ventilation but nothing noteworthy for building design and city planning. It makes a few good points on issues like green house gas credit trading programs and yearly building performance audits. What you will find more of is saber rattling and war metaphors about battles to fight and a line up of the usual suspects like Big Oil, Tony Blair, and George Bush. Even a few architects take their place in the line up. The chapters on "Air Conditioning" and "Tall Buildings" are particularly rough on architects and the rest of the design community. (Sure, we deserve some criticism and a kick in the pants in the direction of progress but I don't have to like it.) The fact is progress is being made and this book fails to mention the notable progress in the last 10 years or so toward "robust, resilient, low energy, high performing" building design. Specifically, if there was a mention of the efforts of the U.S. Green Building Council or LEED or Green Globes or Energy Star for buildings, I missed it.

As an architect in the United States, I am seeking to rise to the 2030 Challenge defined by the AIA and endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. This challenge aims to reduce the building sector's consumption of fossil fuels in the United States by 50 percent by 2030. As an architect in the United States, I did not find Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change offering much help toward this or similar goals. That doesn't mean it isn't a valuable book. It offers a scholarly perspective on climate change; good information on climate change in the UK; lengthy analysis on the probable impacts of climate change on the UK (and some of Europe); and the notes and references at the end of each chapter present a great bibliography on climate change and its impact in the UK (and some of Europe.) Therefore, I can recommend Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change to climatologists and environmental policy wonks, especially if they work in the UK. 

I'll keep Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change on the bookshelf so when the mother of all blizzards comes, and I'm looking for fuel for the fire, I won't have to part with some of my more valuable classics on my bookshelf.