Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Sustainable Design Methods for Architects
by Norbert Lechner, 2008

‘Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Sustainable Design Methods for Architects’ is a book written by Norbert Lechner. This book is the second edition of the ‘Heating, cooling, lighting’. It is regarded as the fundamental book for building design which explains the mechanism of the flow of energy in buildings. This book proposes efficient ways of designing an environmentally sustainable building. It is 720 pages of fundamentals and its application which can be helpful to builders, interior designers, architects and engineers.

It is loaded with ideas for saving energy and practices for building construction. Readers believe that the three tier approach adopted by this book is very useful in understanding and constructing designs. For numerous years ‘Heating, Cooling, Lighting’ has provided architects with information ranging from initial design system to the practical on ground building systems. It utilises the natural advantage of heating, cooling and lighting. The book emphasis on quality and not the quantity to give detailed information on concepts, rules and experience for architects at the level of developing a blue print for the schematic design stage in the process of constructing sustainable buildings. The three tier approach deals with overload avoidance, optimum usage of natural and renewable sources of energy and the usage of mechanical technology.

The other contents discussed are shading, the thermal envelope, passive heating and cooling, electric lighting and HVAC. The book also displays certain case studies which employ all three tiers in their approach to successfully build an environment friendly building. The book also gives agency to architects and other readers to choose from numerous computer programs at the designing stage. It introduces novel topics like under winter solar access, heated period, cool coating, cool towers, facades to be used, architectural lighting, modern architecture, maximum average temperature, creating additional humidity, photovoltaic and active solar technology, green roofs, heat bridges, veiling reflections, LED lamps, excessive brightness ratio, passive sustainability, thermal envelope, creating a bioclimatic chart, vacuum insulation.

‘Heating, Cooling, Lighting’ is a comprehensive and an interesting to read as it has photographs and line drawings for illustration purposes. The hallmark of this book is that it provides you with a sun model to test your models upon. This book is the best to form a fundamental understanding of sustainable building designs as it is not overtly technical and is more than a guide; it is a resource book for contemporary architects and students for the schematic designing process of a building.