Home Design and Building Books Hit the Shelves

By Stephani L. Miller

If you can find time to fit in some reading as the season gears up and business starts to roll back in (fingers crossed!), take a look at a few new titles that are sure to be a source of green building information as well as design inspiration.

Toward a Zero Energy Home: A Complete Guide to Energy Self-Sufficiency at Home (The Taunton Press, $24.95), by greenbuilding.com founder David Johnston and Fine Homebuilding magazine contributor Scott Gibson, authors of Green From the Ground Up, explores self-sufficient houses that produce as much energy as they use. Through a discussion of passive solar design, the building envelope, renewable energy generation, and HVAC systems, the authors make the case for zero-energy houses and guide readers through the design and construction process. Thirteen case studies built for zero-energy living are featured.

Offering a guide to prefabricated home building, Prefabulous and Sustainable (Abrams Books, $25) by Sheri Koones features 25 unique factory-built, sustainable homes in a variety of styles, designs, and sizes. Each house is explored in detail through photographs, floor plans, and project resources, along with explanations of how they are greener, more efficient, sturdier, and more cost-effective than site-built homes. The book seeks to dispel the negative myths associated with prefab homes.

In Green $ense for the Home: Rating the Real Payoff from 50 Green Home Projects (The Taunton Press, $21.95), authors Eric Corey Freed and Kevin Daum help readers answer questions about the cost and value of environmentally friendly home improvements. The pair takes a tag-team, pro/con approach to an in-depth analysis of 50 green home projects, whether replacing, remodeling, or building new. The always-green Freed discusses why each project is good for the home and the environment, as well as how to accomplish the project. Daum offers a practical perspective and reality check, discussing how much money each project will cost or save. He also assesses the practical pitfalls for each job.

Real estate developer and green building consultant Ari Meisel wrote LEED Materials: A Resource Guide to Green Building (Princeton Architectural Press, $40) to help ease the materials selection process for building projects striving for LEED certification. Taking a materials-based approach to sustainable design, the book covers nearly 200 materials, products, and services and discusses how they can be used to achieve the best results for LEED projects, revealing the possible pitfalls and bonus moves of using products to earn maximum credits. Architect Steven Winter, former chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council, wrote the foreword.

Architect and Martha's Vineyard, Mass., resident Keith Moskow and firm partner Robert Linn, principals of Boston-based Moskow Linn Architects, offer a follow-up to their 2005 survey of residential design on Martha's Vineyard with Martha's Vineyard: Contemporary Living (The Monacelli Press, $50). Scheduled to release May 25, the book explores the recent contemporary residential architecture of the Vineyard, presenting 25 houses, designed in the past five years, that extend the island's vernacular beyond the tradition of shingled cottages and houses. Each house's architect provides a description of the project goals and the source of the design, and more than 200 color illustrations and photographs provide visual accompaniment.

The Home Within Us: Romantic Homes, Evocative Rooms (Rizzoli New York, $55) by architect Bobby McAlpine offers a tour of 25 unique houses from the portfolios of McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier. Readers can explore the timeless, nostalgic designs for which McAlpine and his firms have become well-known, as well as their talent for juxtaposing unexpected forms and materials, through 250 illustrations and photographs.