I recently read a book entitled "Green Building Through Integrated Design" by Jerry Yudelson. Author of several books about green and sustainable design, Yudelson is a professional engineer who has chaired Greenbuild for six years running and who has trained 3,500 people in the LEED green building rating system since its inception.

 

While the author's writing style is a little stilted, I found the content to be quite informative. The book takes a look at where things are today and where they're headed relative to Green Building and the integrated design process.

 

Yudelson examines the business cases and costs associated with environmentally friendly and sustainable building design, architecture and construction, and then walks the reader through predesign, conceptual and schematic design considerations, as well as the development and documentation phases.

 

The author not only looks at the design process from an environmental and public health perspective, but also from a cost/benefit perspective. He gives information about critical success factors such as delivering projects on-time and within budget while managing domestic and/or international certification processes, and does so by studying over 30 LEED Platinum projects.

 

To learn more about the book or to purchase it, click here.

Ever read Contract Magazine online? You can read past issues two different ways. It's pretty neat, actually.

 

I subscribe to their newsletter, so when I click on one of their article links from a past issue, I'm brought to a virtual article viewing page which gives me a nifty way for me to read the article, almost as if I'm reading the actual magazine. I can flip through the pages, zoom in or out to change the font size and perform searches for specific keywords or keyphrases. There's even a little virtual crease down the middle of the page. The technology is provided by nxtbook.com.

 

Virtual Magazine Viewer - Flip through Contract Magazine articles online

 

 

If you don't have a fairly good-sized LCD display, you're probably not going to enjoy the experience as much as you would otherwise. But you can also read the same article on the Contract Magazine website. It's just not quite as fun!

 

There are a couple of important notes if you intend to use the virtual viewing pages:

The particular "Pure Platinum" article featured above is about the Audubon Society's newly-completed LEED-certified New York headquarters building. All materials selected for the project were sustainable at some level. Definitely a worthwhile read.. Enjoy!