Superlight: Rethinking How Our Homes Impact the Earth [Hardcover]

One of the most powerful design philosophies of recent years has been architect Glenn Murcutt's dictum that buildings should touch the earth lightly. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, architects have sought to liberate our houses from their solid foundations, but now climate change, new materials and restricted land use have given fresh impetus to finding lightweight solutions for our dwellings. The projects here combine two strands of thinking: that buildings can weigh less and have minimal impact on their environments, and that this lightness--visual, material, ecological--can create beautiful, ethereal houses that offer new, natural modes of habitation and greater communion with our surroundings. Each of the 40 houses selected by Phyllis Richardson--author of the widely successful XSseries and Nano House--is presented through photographs, plans and lucid explanations. Residences that float on air or water, ingenious constructions using local materials, innovative structures, inflatable spaces, high-tech hyper-intelligent houses-- superlight takes many forms. From the desert landscape of Arizona to the urban jungle of Tokyo, from rural China to mountainous Chile, this book brings new solutions for architects and designers everywhere.The innovative lightweight plastic cover of this book hints at the pioneering content within… Plans bring depth to each scheme.Stunning photography, illuminating floor plans and expert explanations.Truly special and unique… Grand designs indeed.The term light in architecture has meant different things to successive generations. For pioneering modernists, Glasarchitektur stood for a transparent, rationalist approach that would further hygienic and economic aims. In architecture of the past several decades, the use of exotic perforated, semitransparent, and multilayered materials shifted attention to the appearance of “lightness,” as in the projects, many by heavyweight architects,lC‘