Design and Construction of Bioclimatic Wooden Greenhouses, Volume 4

Book excerpt: This book is the fourth of four dealing with bioclimatic design and construction by focusing on the most basic and polyvalent of modern environmental systems: the bioclimatic greenhouse, the "Swiss-army chainsaw" of architecture. More specifically, this fourth volume focuses on architectural integration, environmental prediction and how to simulate and structurally size a bioclimatic wooden greenhouse. In more general terms, it helps us to consider how to design and build the structure of bioclimatic, low-energy architecture, with low environmental impact. This multi-volume book covers both free-standing greenhouses that can naturally heat and cool themselves, and lean-to greenhouses that support the natural heating and cooling of buildings; this includes both agricultural greenhouses and greenhouses suited to host people. As a result, it is a trans-disciplinary work deriving its areas of concern from a broad range of study areas, spanning from environmental, to constructional, to structural, drawing the clarity of the approach from the fact that the topics are presented by a single author with a single voice and a designer's mindset. To achieve this, the book adopts a composite set of explanatory strategies and communication registers – including extensive support by 3D construction drawings and examples – and presents not only stateof-the-art solutions, but also experimental ones.