Word: architect
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...reason Murcutt, whose family moved from Papua New Guinea to Australia when he was 5, sticks so close to home is that his houses are very site-specific. The architect doesn't know the site just by sight; he studies the prevailing breezes, the water drainage and the flora and fauna of each proposed building spot. Then he uses what nature offers to create a comfortable home, albeit one the homeowner has to adjust periodically. For example, Murcutt's houses usually have a long, multilayered side facing north. Adjustable louvers, insect screens, moving glass panels and even thermal blinds...
...been offered many commissions outside Australia but has declined them all, preferring to teach his principles at universities around the world (next semester he will be at Yale and Cornell) while enacting them as close as possible to his home in Sydney. "It's great arrogance in an architect to think one can build anywhere appropriately," says Murcutt. "One can put a building anywhere, but for me it is the nuances in the culture that are important." In his lectures, he goes so far as to quote the energy consumption required to manufacture specific building materials...
...profession, William McDonough is an architect and industrial designer. But by temperament and ambition, he is much more: a visionary, a prophet, even a zealot. In his new book, Cradle to Cradle, written with business partner Michael Braungart, McDonough dreams of a world without waste, a world without poisons, a world in which all materials are continuously recycled. He thinks sneakers, for example, should have biodegradable soles so that whatever material scrapes off onto the ground can be readily consumed by worms and microbes. The ultimate goal is to create a sustainable world, enabling humans to "love the children...
Some of the most prominent names in architecture have turned green, at least for selected projects. The three-sided Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, is a major work by a renowned British architect, Sir Norman Foster. At 53 stories, it was until recently the tallest building in Europe. It is also one of the leafiest. All around its triangular interior atrium are gardens in the sky, set at different elevations, so that no worker is more than a few floors away from a sizable patch of greenery. "Building allows us to explore nature in a different way," says Jeremy Edmiston...
...that lasts for 47 years through two world wars, constant money worries, international fame and five children would seem solidly based on shared interests and attitudes and aligned emotions and temperaments. But as Jane Ridley demonstrates in this engrossing study of the relationship between Edwin Lutyens, the leading English architect of the first half of the 20th century, and his wife Emily, nothing could be further from the truth. Lutyens - the prolific and imaginative designer behind much of Imperial New Delhi, London's Cenotaph war memorial and scores of country houses in England and France - had the good luck...