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Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Architects, by Norbert Lechner  Hot PDF Print E-mail
Reviews Books
Written by Juintow Lin   
Tuesday, 02 October 2007
Description

From Amazon.com

Review
"The Second Edition of Heating, Cooling, Lighting is one of the most useful and important books on building design in years...Nowhere else have we seen such clear explanations of enery flow mechanisms that occur in buildings. Take our word for it, this book is a must have for any design firm." --Environmental Building News, May 2001

Book Description
* Qualitative graphic approach to understanding the techniques of heating, cooling, and lighting reflects the decision-making approach of architects and students.
* Useful appendices provide sun path diagrams and solar site evaluation tools. Appendices new to this edition include practical checklists of strategies and issues in evaluating energy use in the building design stage, and an annotated list of helpful sustainability videos to use in class, professional meetings, or with clients.
* A new chapter on photovoltaics discusses their use as an ideal energy source, offers design options, and case studies as well as their future role in building design.
* A new chapter on sustainable "green" design includes case studies and examples of water conservation measures, effects from energy production and consumption, and an analysis of indoor air quality.
* Mathematical formulas are excerpted from the text and appear in side boxes, so they don't cloud the text with overly-technical information.



User reviews

Average user rating from: 5 user(s)

Overall rating
9.5
Easy to read
9.8
Content
9.2
Would recommend
9.4
 

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Heating,Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Arch, Saturday, 06 October 2007

Written by Nicole Hale   -   View all my reviews   -   Top 10 Reviewer

Overall rating
9.3
Easy to read
10.0
Content
9.0
Would recommend
9.0
Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Architects is a very useful tool for, but not just limited to architects, designers and architecture students. The entire book is filled with information from design strategies for specific design situations to more broad information, like sustainable features and climate zones across the United States.

It gives a clear understanding of what the greenhouse effect is and is represented with simple, but clear illustrations on how and why this phenomenon occurs. It also includes the factors that contribute to things like climate change, for example, and why different climates exist in different natural environments with clear and helpful diagrams.

The book offers basic ideas of how to incorporate sustainable features into your design and reasons why to do it a certain way. Again, simple diagrams help explain these processes further, which can be very beneficial to visual learners. In the written content, it gives good explanations of the information presented in the graphs and charts and is helpful at deciphering what goes to what and how to read the information properly.

For architects, designers and architecture students, the tools and ideas presented in this book should already be somewhat basic knowledge of design strategies, but is a useful reference tool when implementing specific design features, especially when related to a specific climate zone, for example.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Heating, Cooling, Lighting Review, Wednesday, 03 October 2007

Written by Milad Sarkis   -   View all my reviews   -   Top 50 Reviewer

Overall rating
9.3
Easy to read
10.0
Content
9.0
Would recommend
9.0
Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Architects is just that, a book of design methods and ideas for Architects and architectural students. While the book is not an introductory book, it does refresh, and brief the reader on basic environmental issues facing our limited global resourecs.

After the basics are covered, the book goes on to illustrate various methods that architects can utilize in their projects. They detail the different types of sun shading, and when it is appropriate to utilize the different methods. What I found most useful was the way the book detailed the many strategies available to produce a "sustainable house," and grouped them hierarchically.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning how to apply various design elements into their projects to create more sustainable buildings.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Heating,Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Arch, Monday, 08 October 2007

Written by Eduardo Dominguez   -   View all my reviews   -   Top 50 Reviewer

Overall rating
9.0
Easy to read
9.0
Content
9.0
Would recommend
9.0
Heating,Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Arch offers insight into sustainable design strategies. It iforms the reader why green design is so important and offers solutions.

The auhtor focuses attention on vernacularand regional architecture as a means to energy-efficient design. The text among other things focuses attention to macro- and micro-climate and its relevance to sustainable design. The author argues that because of limited resources and because our environment is being adversely affected by pollutants, we have the responsability to design green.

This is a great tool for design students.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Great book., Wednesday, 05 December 2007

Written by Rosabelle Linchangco   -   View all my reviews   -   Top 50 Reviewer

Overall rating
9.7
Easy to read
10.0
Content
9.0
Would recommend
10.0
The information the book, Heating, Cooling, Lighting, contains range from broader issues pertaining to climate change and sustainability, to more specific information like the various strategies that are best for the different climate zones across the United States. It's a good introductory book to learn the various environmental factors confronting architects and designers today. It's a great reference material, especially during the early stages in the design process. This book, although it provides some very general information, still allows you to focus and narrow your options down as far as strategies are concerned, to what is specific for your climate zone.

What I like best about the book is its simplicity and clarity. The ideas presented are explained in a level that is easily understood and the simplicity of the diagrams and illustrations that accompany the text serve only make the ideas presented clearer to the reader. If sustainability is something new to you, this book is a wonderful resource to get you started thinking about it.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

student, Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Written by Dong Nhat Nguyen   -   View all my reviews   -   Top 50 Reviewer

Overall rating
10.0
Easy to read
10.0
Content
10.0
Would recommend
10.0
student
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