Concrete decay destroys infrastructure (online)

How industrial civilisation is (literally) built on a foundation with an expiry date

The main issue is simple: putting in steel reinforcing bars lowers the cost and weight of installing reinforced concrete, but at the severe expense of reducing its lifespan. In other words, literally everything you see today that’s made of concrete will need to be replaced within a hundred years of its installation.
Our reinforced concrete infrastructure sends a dire warning.

Building your eco-home (book)

The Eco-Home Design Guide: Principles and practice for new-build and retrofit

Designing an eco home is much more about working with your house's place and situation than relying in intrusive technology and hi-tech materials. In this book, Christopher Day draws on his extensive experience to explain the key principles of eco-home design, using common-sense methods to create a pleasant, comfortable and healthy home. With beautifully simple hand-drawn illustrations, he takes you through: using the local topography, combined with landscaping, to improve your home's micro-climate, designing to keep your home dry and warm in the winter, and cool in the summer, minimizing hidden environmental impact, making the house safe and healthy, both emotionally and physically.

New eco-village research website

Global Ecovillage Network Research Website

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is a network of sustainable communities that bridge different cultures, countries, and continents. GEN serves as umbrella organization for ecovillages, transition town initiatives, intentional communities, and ecologically-minded individuals worldwide. Their research group has a new website, which will be a contact point for and coordination of researchers that approach ecovillages or GEN. It aims at networking, integration & dissemination, and setting values in the area of ecovillage research.

Bio-integrated farming (book)

The Bio-Integrated Farm: A Revolutionary Permaculture-Based System Using Greenhouses, Ponds, Compost Piles, Aquaponics, Chickens, and More 

The Bio-Integrated Farm is a must-read, twenty-first-century manual for managing natural resources and brings system farming and permaculture to a whole new level. Jadrnicek’s groundbreaking insights into permaculture go beyond the term’s philosophical foundation to create hardworking farm-scale designs. Jadrnicek’s components serve at least seven functions. With every additional function that a component performs, the design becomes more advanced and saves even more energy. A bio-integrated greenhouse, for example, doesn’t just extend the season for growing vegetables; it also serves as a rainwater collector, a pond site, an aquaponics system, and a heat generator.

 

Connecting cities and oceans (book)

Blue Urbanism

The consequences of our emotional disconnect from oceans have been severe: the marine ecosystems that make up 70% of our planet are imperiled as never before. Restoring the integrity of the oceans will require unprecedented effort, but Blue Urbanism highlights the promise of urban areas around the world that have begun to prioritize marine health, such as efforts to discover  the amazing marine biodiversity near cities, new prototypes of wind- and solar-powered shipping vessels, urban aquaponics systems and buildings and parks that connect with the ocean visually and structurally. This book offers an impassioned argument for the need to harness the political, economic, and emotional power of our growing cities to benefit the ocean, offering a comprehensive look at the challenges and great potential for urban areas to integrate ocean health into their policy and planning goals.

Net zero energy building (book)

The New Net Zero Leading-Edge Design and Construction of Homes and Buildings for a Renewable Energy Future

The New Net Zero Leading-Edge Design and Construction of Homes and Buildings for a Renewable Energy Future - See more at: http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_new_net_zero:hardcover#sthash.XU2d0nim.dpuf

The new threshold for green building is not just low energy, it’s net-zero energy. In The New Net Zero, sustainable architect Bill Maclay charts the path for designers and builders interested in exploring green design’s new frontier.
Designers and builders will find a wealth of state-of-the-art information on such considerations as:

• air, water, and vapor barriers;
• embodied energy;
• residential and commercial net- zero standards;
• monitoring and commissioning;
• insulation options;
• costs;
• and more.
  

The comprehensive overview is accompanied by several case studies, which include institutional buildings, commercial projects, and residences. Both new-building and renovation projects are covered in detail.

The New Net Zero Leading-Edge Design and Construction of Homes and Buildings for a Renewable Energy Future - See more at: http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_new_net_zero:hardcover#sthash.XU2d0nim.dpuf

Aesthetics in green design (book)

The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design 

Does going green change the face of design or only its content? The first book to outline principles for the aesthetics of sustainable design, The Shape of Green argues that beauty is inherent to sustainability, for how things look and feel is as important as how they’re made.