Product Description

The New Autonomous House has a simple but revolutionary message â that it is possible to live in a home which is inexpensive, kind to the planet, and which liberates its owner from utility bills.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #206342 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Brenda Vale is Professor of Architectural Technology and Director of the Sustainable Design Research Centre at the University of Auckland, where Robert Vale is a Research Fellow. They are the authors of Green Architecture, also published by Thames & Hudson.

Customer Reviews

excellent guide to the minutae of sustainable construction
I bought this book after reading a review in a Sunday paper. I had watched several recent programmes about "green" housebuilding and found them very superficial.

By contrast, this book has carefully considered all of the key elements with an honest evaluation of the pros and cons of different options.

As a "non-architect" I was fascinated to learn about the principles of thermal mass and the different ways of buffering supplies of heat, water and power.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in environmental issues, particularly anyone thinking about refurbishments or new build.

Very technical, very dull, badly illustrated
After wading through the rather tedious discussion at the beginning of the book about what constitues 'autonomous', I was hoping for an interesting and informative adventure of a family building an eco-friendly house in the UK.

Unfortunately the book is not very informative and certainly not interesting. This book is a textbook - it reminded me of the economics textbooks I had at university - full of charts and tables of things that are frankly, not of much interest in a practical sense. The authors fail to demonstrate any sense of humour, and the badly done line drawings that substitute for photographs are poor to the level of being pointless.

The authors obviously know their facts and figures, but to me they just fail to put them across in a way that makes it of any interest to the reader. I'm sure there are nuggets of really helpful information in there, I just can't get enough enthusiasm after a page or two of techo-babble to stick with it to find them. Great if you're about to sit a 3-hour exam on the meaning of 'autonomous', rather less useful if you're wondering how to build a low-energy home.