Sustainable Homes: 26 Designs that Respect the Earth »

James Grayson Trulove is an author, publisher, and editor of books on the subjects of architecture, landscape architecture, and garden design. His recent books include New Sustainable Homes, 25 Apartments and Lofts Under 2500 Square Feet, and Prefab Now. He resides in Washington, D.C., and New York.

Sustainable Homes puts to rest the stigma that "green architecture" is unattractive and unsuitable for residential architecture.For the houses shown in this volume represent design equal to or superior to most conventional houses. Each of these "eco" houses is unique. Some tread lightly on the site by nestling into the land. Others are designed to be extremely well suited to the climactic zones in which they are built. Many use materials that do no harm to the environment—materials that are recycled, salvaged, or harvested.

The houses featured in Sustainable Homes are designed by today's top architects such as Obie Bowman, Fernau and Hartman, Hanrahan and Meyers, and Lake/Flato. They reveal how much the parameters of ecological design have expanded in just a few short years. Over two dozen individual houses are featured — from locations as diverse as a Canadian cove to the Arizona desert, from Kansas plains to the Norwegian coast, from California bluffs to South Carolina wetlands — each described through descriptions, photographs, plans, drawings, and schematics.