Did you know that a clean neighborhood experiences one-fifth less crime than an untidy one, that profit margins for businesses near Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Public Library have risen 50 percent since it opened in 2004, that birdsong stimulates carbon sequestration by trees? Lance Hosey is on a mission to prove that society places value on beautiful environments, which makes them more enduring. His new book, The Shape of Green, leaves no case unturned for recognizing beauty as a valid consideration in green building.
Environmentalists have sounded the call for more beauty in design since at least 1994, when John Elkington conceived the term “triple bottom line” to argue that social equity and economic development endear a building to a community, thereby factoring into its sustainability as much as ecological footprint. The Shape of Green explains this three-pronged worldview, as well as other necessary backstories, such as the concept of embodied energy, without sounding at all like a textbook. Then, with equal flair, Hosey draws links between beauty and ecological responsibility, again and again.
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