Making Better Buildings

If you’re drilling deep into sustainable building and want more than superficial details, let Chris Magwood be your guide. Making Better Buildings will help builders and homeowners quantify the green building process, and better understand the impact of their decisions. ---Scott Gibson, Green Building Advisor

Chris Magwood's new book is exciting news for builders and homeowners everywhere! This includes people who haven't even heard yet of the ideas that Chris lays out with such accessible knowledge and clarity. As one of the most knowledgeable and experienced ecological builders in North America, practicality and efficiency is one of his prime concerns. As one of the leading natural builders in the world, his affordable ideas are offered for all scales, within his broad and creative vision. ---Mark Lakeman, Design Lead at communitecture, architecture & planning. Co-Founder, The City Repair Project, Portland, Oregon

Based on Chris Magwood’s considerable experience of sustainable buildings systems, this book provides invaluable guidance for builders, designers and those thinking of building their own home. Stripping away the hype, the book provides a rational and balanced assessment of alternative options for the major components of a building. It is particularly valuable since it includes a wide range of criteria such as cost, durability, code compliance and labour intensiveness together with environmental criteria, which make it a highly useful decision support tool for many sustainable building projects. Also, we are encouraged to get beyond the bickering about different systems at the “micro” level and to focus on the bigger picture, “macro” issues, when choosing building components and systems which will lead to significant change. ---Professor Mark Gorgolewski, Ryerson University

Chris Magwood’s Making Better Buildings is essential reading for home builders, owner-builders, or anyone interested in hiring a contractor to build their green dream home. This book is full of useful, up-to-date, cutting edge information and is amazingly thorough and easy to read. It will help readers make the best decisions possible regarding energy efficiency, cost, durability, health, embodied energy, labor requirements, and so on. Frankly, I think it is one of the most important building books ever published! ---Dan Chiras, Ph.D., Director of The Evergreen Institute (www.evergreeninstitute.org) and author of The Natural House, The New Ecological Home, The Solar House and many more.

This is sustainable building without any hype. The authors present the real facts about the upsides and downsides of the most widely discussed materials and technologies, gleaned from designer/builders who have implemented them in real-world, code-approved projectsThe book covers all of the available materials and puts them in a comparative framework, allowing readers to assemble the various parts and tailor the information to suit their individual projects.The book explores each of the materials in a systematic way by taking all of the sustainable potential inherent in each of these approaches and allows the designer-builder to choose materials to fit their budget, energy, time and efficiency targetsThe authors are co-directors of the Endeavour Centre for Innovative Building and Living in Peterborough, ONThe authors are recipients of several awards including the Harrowsmith Magazine Canadian Eco-Hero Award in 2007, and the Home Sweet Home Sustainable Building Design Award in 2011The authors are experts in their field and have designed and built some of the most innovative, sustainable buildings in North America in the past ten years, including homes and public buildingsCo-op availableNational advertising: Green Builder, Mother Earth NewsNational print campaign: Green Builder, Mother Earth News, SAB, Yes! Magazine Social Media Outreach: Email promotion to members of Natural Building Network and Ecological Building Education Centres. Promoted on New Society Publishers Facebook page with book announcement and contest, promotion on @NewSocietyPub Twitter, #naturalbuilding Excerpts in: Mother Earth News, Permaculture Activist, BackhomePromotion through the author’s website and blog: www.chrismagwood.ca and www.endeavourcentre.com