10 Books on Architecture, Health, and Climate Change

Today, April 23, International Book Day, we share our selection of 10 essential reads for all those interested in how architecture can contribute to improving people’s well-being and the future of our planet.

1. Healthy Buildings – Joseph Allen

“The Director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program and the leading expert on urban resilience at Harvard Business School reveal what you can do to harness the power of your offices, homes, and schools to protect your health and improve all aspects of your performance and well-being.”

2. WHO Housing and Health Guidelines

“Improving housing conditions can save lives, prevent disease, improve quality of life, reduce poverty, help mitigate climate change, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including those related to health and sustainable cities.”

3. Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment – Justin Hollander

“The authors review new findings in psychology and neuroscience to help architects and planners better understand their clients as the sophisticated mammals they are, who come into the world with integrated responses to the environment that have evolved over millennia.”

4. Zero Waste Home – Bea Johnson

“Since living by practicing Zero Waste, my life and my family’s life has changed for the better. We are happy and feel that we lead a more meaningful life based on experiences, rather than things. Now, my goal is to share these benefits in health, time, and finances.”

5. ZEDlife: How to Build a Low-Carbon Society Today – Bill Dunster

“This book offers a compelling challenge to the current addiction to excessive consumption of natural capital and energy, and offers viable and sustainable solutions for carbon-free and waste-free design.”

6. Healthy Home – Mariano Bueno and Elisabet Silvestre

“Today’s lifestyle requires us to spend nearly 90% of our time inside buildings. Hence, health in relation to habitat takes on special relevance, and it is necessary to know what the risk factors are in order to recognize them, avoid them, and make our home a healthier environment full of life.”

7. Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities – Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett

“A person’s home is their castle. But demographic and economic changes have turned our castles into islands. How can we recover the elements of the traditional village—family, cooperation, community, and sense of belonging—in the context of 21st-century life?”

8. Living Without Toxins – Elisabet Silvestre

“If you wake up at night and get up tired; if you lack energy and struggle to perform in your daily life; if you suffer from headaches, respiratory or digestive problems that do not improve with medical treatment… it is time to examine how your most immediate environment affects your health: your home.”

9. Design with Climate – Víctor Olgyay

“Following the 1970 energy crisis, Western society became aware of the limits and consequences of the indiscriminate use of artificial energies. The architecture sector, sensitive to this issue, discovered that twenty years earlier an author had already explored it in depth.”

10. ECOHABITAR Magazine No. 58

“With the departure of a government marked by corruption and clear collusion with the energy lobby, the possibility of returning to an acceptable energy policy could be feasible, although we do not know the commitments and agreements of the new Executive with the powerful players in the energy sector.”