By including ecological concerns in the design process from the outset, architecture can enhance life. Author Brook Muller understands how a designer's predispositions and poetic judgement in dealing with complex and dynamic ecological systems impact the "greenness" of built outcomes. Ecology and the Architectural Imagination offers a series of speculations on architectural possibility when ecology is embedded from conceptual phases onward, how notions of function and structure of ecosystems can inspire ideas of architectural space making and order, and how the architect's role and contribution can shift through this engagement. As an ecological architect working in increasingly dense urban environments, you can create diverse spaces of inhabitation and connect project scale living systems with those at the neighborhood and region scales. Equipped with ecological literacy, critical thinking and collaboration skills, you are empowered to play important roles in the remaking of our cities.

About the Author

Brook Muller is Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Associate Professor of Architecture, Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Ecological Design and core faculty member of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon, USA.

Reviews

"Humanity's entry into the Era of Cities necessitates an ecologically regenerative urbanism. Brook Muller is one of its greatest pioneers."

Robert F. Young, Assistant Professor at University of Texas

"This is the luminous re-imagining of architectural possibility that the reeling world deeply needs, a turn from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric ethos."

Kathleen Dean Moore, co-editor, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

"A stimulating impulse directing architecture beyond green design to far a broader conversation with natural, political, metaphorical, and historical ecologies."

W. S. K. Cameron, PhD, Loyola Marymount University

"Recognizing that the very meaning of ecological and sustainable design is an open-ended imaginative experiment, Muller perceptively examines a number of metaphors for framing design concepts conducive to helping humans, non-humans, and ecosystems flourish together."
Mark Johnson, Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Oregon and author of The Meaning of the Body, and Metaphors We Live By

"Brook Muller understands the relevance of a more sustainable built environment for our societies and a better way of living together. This book shows examples of good practice and explains why a more conscious built environment is relevant for the social contract."

Stefan Behnisch, partner, Behnisch Architekten

Book Information
ISBN 9780415622752
Author Brook Muller
Format Paperback
Page Count 178
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 270g