Toward a New Regionalism: Environmental Architecture in the Pacific Northwest Book

This book describes Pacific Northwest regional architecture and its connections the environment and sustainability. The author's thesis is that PNW regional architecture has always had an aspect of environmental responsibility because of the region's strong connection to the natural world. This historic connection has expressed itself in homes that use local materials, orient themselves with respect to light and wind, and take advantage of the relatively mild northwest climate.

Stylistically, Pacific Northwest regionalism has its roots in modernism, but it eschews the extreme minimalism of modernism for a closer integration with the natural world. Thus, while you will see post and beam construction and large expanses of glass in our regional architecture, you will also see use of natural materials and buildings that try to blend with the natural environment. My non-architecturally educated intuition is that Pacific Northwest regionalism takes more after the styles of Frank Lloyd Wright than more stark modernists such as Le Corbusier.

What I appreciated most about this book was the discussion of sustainable building technologies that are applicable to the region. For example, partial earth sheltering is an effective strategy in the NW because our geography is rather hilly. Our mild climates and low light levels both contribute to making passive solar strategies more effective than active solar strategies. Bioswales and rain gardens are particularly effective in the area for obvious reasons.

What made the book less appealing to me was that it focused on non-residential buildings. I did enjoyed learning about applying sustainable strategies to all building types, but my main interest lies the architecture of the home, and I would have appreciated if there had been at least one case study which discussed how regional design strategies can influence homes.