Rebuilding Earth: Designing Ecoconscious Habitats for Humans

by Teresa Coady, Christiana Figueres (Foreword by), Elizabeth May (Afterword)

Overview

A revolutionary guide to designing humane, eco-conscious homes, buildings, and cities of the future.

It is estimated that the earth's population will expand to an unprecedented nine billion people over the next century. This explosion in population is predicted to place further stress on our environment, deplete our natural resources, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression due to overcrowding. In this visionary and uplifting book, Teresa Coady offers readers new hope. Rebuilding Earth is her blueprint for designing and building the cities, buildings, and homes of tomorrow, resulting in more conscious, sustainable, and humane living. Coady shows us how we can shift from an outdated Industrial-Age framework to a more humane, Digital-Age framework. This revolutionary approach will enable communities to harness various forms of green energy and reduce the amount of material needed to build infrastructure while contributing to a healthier planet (and society). We can then experience a new sense of purpose, health, and happiness. Meaningful and lasting change, the author tells us, can only come through designing interconnected communities that are vibrant, resilient, and communal. Unlike most predictions of doom and gloom, Coady presents a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity and its future. This book will appeal to those in the construction, design and development finance industries, as well as anyone interested in improving their lives through understanding the connections between the environment and health.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623174316
Publisher:	North Atlantic Books
Publication date:	03/20/2020
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	1,234,533
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Teresa Coady is an award-winning architect and Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. In addition to her work as president and CEO of BuntingCoady B+H and COO of Kasian, two of Canada's largest design firms, Coady is also a director of the International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environments (iiSBE) and a member of the United Nations Environment Programme Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (UNEP GlobalABC). She received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in 1999 and the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Award in 2008. She resides with her family in Vancouver.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 How Did We Get Here? 7

Chapter 2 Water: Why Blue Is the New Green 23

Chapter 3 Forests: The "Wood Wide Web" 43

Chapter 4 Natural Features: Renewing Connections Above and Below 63

Chapter 5 Solar: Utilizing the Source of All Energy on Earth 85

Chapter 6 Redefining the Energy Infrastructure 107

Chapter 7 Atmosphere: Restoring Our Living, Breathing Planet 129

Chapter 8 Earth: Earth Energy and Materials 149

Chapter 9 Sound: Speech, Music, and Noise 171

Chapter 10 The Natural Human: Rewilding Our Cities 191

Chapter 11 Human Community: Reimagining Ourselves 213

Chapter 12 A New Model: Conscious Construction 237

The Twelve Principles of Conscious Construction: A Summary 247

Afterword 253

Further Reading 255

Index 283

Acknowledgments 297

About the Author 299

Editorial Reviews

"This book extends current ideas about green building to incorporate a much richer and deeper connection to earth systems, wild habitats, and human behavior. Rebuilding Earth is an ambitious book that carries a reminder that our remarkable human resilience and intelligence 'are strengths to be leveraged' in reimagining and remaking a better world."
—Foreword Reviews

"Rebuilding Earth is a splendidly idiosyncratic compendium of facts; inspiring stories about emerging possibilities; good advice about how to use smart science; and goodwill to make human activity and the natural environment enriching to each other. Teresa Coady is at her best when she is thinking like an architect, explaining how we can design, build, and operate buildings so as to improve lives while harnessing natural materials and processes in ways that are sustainable in material, human, and social terms. The heart of this fact-laden and eminently readable book lies in designing buildings and communities that can deliver happier lives for current and future inhabitants, supported by an immense respect for the complexity of the natural environment."
—JOHN HELLIWELL, DPhil, coeditor of the World Happiness Report and professor emeritus, Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia

"Teresa Coady offers a rigorous analysis of why a systems- and nature-based, inclusive way of developing for the lives and livelihoods of all on this vulnerable planet is not a choice but a necessity.
This book is a call to action for a comprehensive, step-by-step rebuilding of our future and our planet.”
—HENK OVINK, special envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands, and
Sherpa to the UN/WB High Level Panel on Water

"Teresa Coady offers a way forward—a means to reimagine the relationship between place, nature, and the physical spaces we construct and inhabit for most of the hours of our lives. Her goal is not to deny or reinvent the architectural past, but to implement the essential elements of what makes for greatness in any age. She asks fundamental questions. ‘What kind of world do we want to inhabit and bequeath? What landscape of the imagination do we want to erect around the lives of our children, knowing full well that the shape of these structures will both hone their memories and inspire their aspirations?’ Rebuilding Earth is a road map of hope."
—WADE DAVIS, author of The Serpent and the Rainbow, BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk, and professor of Anthropology, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia

 "If our civilization is to continue and flourish, we need to find ways to align human urban systems with ecological planetary systems. Coady’s twelve principles of Conscious Construction outline how urban and building design can begin to address the demands for resilient and vibrant communities using both old and new methods and technologies. Rebuilding Earth  offers a valuable message that needs to be adopted widely."
—MARK GORGOLEWSKI PhD, MSc, Dip ARC, BSc, LEED AP, professor and chair, Department of Architectural Science, Ryerson University Rebuild_

From the Publisher