In most communities, land use regulations are based on a limited model that allows for only one end result: the production of more and more suburbia, composed of endless subdivisions and shopping centers, that ultimately covers every bit of countryside with "improvements." Fortunately, sensible alternatives to this approach do exist, and methods of developing land while at the same time conserving natural areas are available.
In Conservation Design for Subdivisions, Randall G. Arendt explores better ways of designing new residential developments than we have typically seen in our communities. He presents a practical handbook for residential developers, site designers, local officials, and landowners that explains how to implement new ideas about land-use planning and environmental protection. Abundantly illustrated with site plans (many of them in color), floor plans, photographs, and renditions of houses and landscapes, it describes a series of simple and straightforward techniques that allows for land-conserving development.
The author proposes a step-by-step approach to conserving natural areas by rearranging density on each development parcel as it is being planned so that only half (or less) of the buildable land is turned into houselots and streets. Homes are built in a less land-consumptive manner that allows the balance of property to be permanently protected and added to an interconnected network of green spaces and green corridors. Included in the volume are model zoning and subdivision ordinance provisions that can help citizens and local officials implement these innovative design ideas.
The design of housing has commanded the attention of the greatest architects of the twentieth century. In this stunning volume, Roger Sherwood presents thirty-two notable examples of multi-family housing from many countries and four continents, selected for their importance as prototypes. Designed by such masters as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, they range from single-house clusters to row-houses, terrace houses, party-wall and large-courtyard housing, to urban high-rise towers and slabs.
The thirty-two buildings or housing complexes are illustrated with photographs, site plans, floor plans, elevations, and marvelous axonometric drawings. In each case Mr. Sherwood gives background information on the project, mention, factors the architect had to take into consideration (social, environmental, financial), points out creative solutions to particular problems, and comments on special features of the design. Laymen as well as professionals will find his presentations enlightening.
In the Introduction, Mr. Sherwood sets forth the basic principles of organization that apply to housing. He analyzes first the limited number of ways in which individual apartments or living units can be laid out (each type or plan lending itself to variations and permutations) and then the ways in which different units can be vertically and horizontally organized within a single building. Drawings and plans of more than eighty housing complexes in twenty countries accompany his analysis.
Mr. Sherwood offers his book in the belief that there is no excuse for shoddy architecture; that no branch of architecture is more important than the design of human habitations; and that much is to be learned from the study of significant buildings of the recent past.
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