Green: Architecture Now

These days, green is the name of the game. There has never been so much interest in the ecological impact of buildings as there is today. This is not a negligible fact in the struggle to control pollution and in the search for responsible "sustainable" methods of construction. Buildings are among the heaviest consumers of natural resources and account for a significant portion of the greenhouse gas emissions that affect climate change. With global warming now a significant international political issue, architecture itself is on the brink of significant changes, where style and matters of aesthetics are placed in a secondary position behind issues of sustainability. At a certain time, "green" buildings were ugly and complicated affairs, usually multicolored as though an entire rainbow in one building might be sufficient to prove a concern for ecology. This is surely no longer the case as buildings published in this current volume demonstrate. However, it may be that green architecture...