Sustainability and urban gardening aren’t new, but, if the number of books published on the subjects is any indication, their popularity keeps growing. Here are five go-green titles that have arrived at our office in the past few months.
1 My Green City: Back to Nature with Attitude and Style
Here’s proof we can all have our own omega garden or raise chickens on rooftops. The editors of My Green City have compiled dozens of wildly original projects hatched by architects, designers and activists, each exploring ways to reconnect humans with nature. The projects profiled are as basic as harvesting tomatoes out of water bottle planters, and as inspired as detailed concepts for skyscraper farms. (Gestalten)
2 Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Architecture
Backyard and balcony farming hasn’t reached any sort of mainstream tipping point, mostly because busy urbanites aren’t convinced there’s time for tending to the garden patch. There’s also the issue of squirrels. But like most passionate early adopters, city farmers have tonnes of innovative and inspired problem-solving ideas on how harvesting vegetables can co-exist with city living. (Monacelli Press)
3 Vitamin Green
We reviewed this beautiful volume (edited by Sara Goldsmith) when it was first released last May, and appraised it as one hefty dose of eco-design. By profiling over 100 buildings and products, Vitamin Green demonstrates just how far eco-innovation has come. Who can dispute the genius behind a sailboat made of 12,500 plastic bottles, or a pavilion in Thailand that generates its electricity though the work of a single ox? (Phaidon)
4 Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future
The dust jacket on this 318-page book describes it as a “primer,” though it’s much more robust in its intellectual ambition than that word suggests. The essays, more than 60, dig deep into such topics as “The marriage of economic growth and sustainable development” (by Christopher B. Leinberger, a fellow at Brookings Institute in Washington D.C.) and “The latest word: the relevance of new urbanism” (by masterplanner Dhiru A. Thadani of Maryland). Egg-heady? Yes. Relevant? Absolutely. (Rizzoli)
5 White Green: Ten projects in the great outdoors by White Arkiteckter
Written by Swedish journalist and Azure contributor Mark Issit, White Green earned a Red Dot award for its design by Stockholm’s Kazkoff Design. Housed within its bifold cover are 10 projects by White Arkiteckter, one of Scandinavia’s leading architecture firms committed to sustainable architecture. Few practices have developed such an elegant mastery of building within the natural environment while also leading the way in eco-sensitive construction. (Laurence King)
