C O N T E X T 1 1 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 43 Book reviews Adapt and survive Building for a Changing Climate: the challenge for construction, planning and energy Peter F Smith, Earthscan, 2010, 170pp, b&w, ISBN 978 1 844077 35 9, £49.95 Peter F Smith has written extensively on architecture and sustainability. In this book he provides a sobering view of climate change. All the attempts being made to reduce our carbon emissions have been based on preventing a devastating rise in temperature. This book discusses the likelihood that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has underestimated the impacts and that a rise of four degrees centigrade in average global temperature is possible, and some would argue probable, within the next 100 years. This may well have a devastating impact on large areas of the globe. Smith has written a thorough and insightful commentary on the current position. He has considered the twin crises of climate change and depleting energy reserves. Rather than bemoaning our potentially lifethreatening position, this book provides up-to-date examples from all over the world of how we are creating innovative solutions which will allow us to retain a sustainable environment and live in a changing world. The first three chapters discuss the likely scenarios which will result from climate change and why we should be concerned. The National Trust is used as an example of an organisation conceding to the inevitable change by acknowledging that it is no longer economically viable to continue to combat coastal erosion in some areas. The main part of the book discusses the need to adapt design in order to make life tolerable in view of the changing conditions. Examples quoted range from new-build housing, through non-residential developments, to eco-towns, and include a discussion on renewable energy. An interesting assertion is the need to consider returning to heavyweight construction. It is argued that this will provide additional thermal mass and improved strength characteristics, in order to prevent overheating and protect against increasingly severe storms. This goes against the current trend for lightweight, heavily insulated construction and highlights the problem of how the developing countries are addressing climate change. The short-term view is that we must prevent heat loss and therefore reduce climate change through building highly insulated lightweight buildings.Yet this book asks us to acknowledge that some form of climate change is inevitable and that we should be designing to combat that change, in addition to reducing our energy demands. Concluding chapters focus on energy and the likely sources of future energy provisions. Written for professionals, and including extensive technical content, the book would be useful for all who have an interest in design and planning. It manages to detail a potentially catastrophic future for the planet and yet still allow us to retain some hope. This book gives many examples of actions which could be taken to reduce the impact of climate change. It is in the hands of those who manage and finance the construction and energy industries to decide if they will rise to the challenge and create a society which can respond to the predicted changes. Smith makes clear that adapting and innovating will be essential for the challenging times ahead. Karen Heverin, conservation officer for Oldham Council Labour of love Living Buildings: architectural conservation – philosophy, principles and practice Donald Insall, Images Publishing, 2008, 272pp, ISBN 978 1 864701 92 0, £39.50 Knighted in the 2010 Queen’s birthday honours list for services to conservation architecture, Donald Insall has written a lavishly illustrated and beautifully presented volume celebrating 50 years of practice and achievement in the historic environment. With its concise and measured texts, its profusion of building and area plans and sketches, its exquisitely executed two- and three-dimensional drawings, and exhaustive photographic archive, Living Buildings presents an almost breathtaking compendium of post-war architectural and urban conservation – including the design of new buildings in context – through the eyes of perhaps the most widely influential architectplanner practitioner of our time. Insall writes with a compelling mixture of philosophy and practice that embraces the whole of a period that transformed conservation from a defensive, almost reactionary, small-scale movement into one that today underscores interventions at all levels. These range from unlisted structures and infill sites in conservation areas, through the adaptive reuse of major monumental complexes such as Somerset House, to the scale of entire historic cities. Insall talks us through the formative influences in his career, the ones that underscore the teamwork spirit on which the success of his eponymous practice has been built and depends. ‘Architecture,’ he tells us, ‘is not only an academic pursuit. Building is a practical expression of its materials and their nature.’ Insall regrets the general lack of awareness of history in architectural training today, and extols his own good fortune as a post-war Lethaby scholar of the SPAB. ‘Together, we handled real materials, felt their decay, aided their renewal, and began to understand how structures live.’ In planning school, Insall fell under the influence of a disciple of Patrick Geddes, and from him was inspired with the sense of relationships with the wider issues of the world’s natural environment and its resources. ‘The microscope and the telescope each has its place in discovery, and
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