Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment - 2nd Edition by Reyner Banham (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Reyner Banham was a pioneer in arguing that technology, human needs, and environmental concerns must be considered an integral part of architecture. No historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings and on the minds of architects. In this revision of his classic work, Banham has added considerable new material on the use of energy, particularly solar energy, in human environments. Included in the new material are discussions of Indian pueblos and solar architecture, the Centre Pompidou and other high-tech buildings, and the environmental wisdom of many current architectural vernaculars.

From the Back Cover

This book is offered as a contribution to the history of architecture as normally understood and was produced by fairly conventional modes of architectural history writing. When the research for the present study was first put in hand, the intention was to write a purely architectual history; to consider what architects had taken to be the proper use and exploitation of mechanical environmental controls, and to show how this had manifested itself in the design of their buildings.

About the Author

Reyner Banham (1922-88) was professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz.