Design and Construction of Bioclimatic Wooden Greenhouses 3 - Design of Construction: Envelopes

The book is the first of a series of four dealing with bioclimatic design and construction by focusing on the most basic and polyvalent of modern environmental systems: the bioclimatic greenhouse. More specifically, this third volume focuses on how the envelope of bioclimatic wooden greenhouses may be designed and built. In more general terms, it helps us to consider how to design and build the transparent and opaque enclosures of bioclimatic, low-energy architecture, with low environmental impact. This multi-volume work covers both free-standing greenhouses that can naturally heat and cool themselves, and lean-to greenhouses that support the natural heating and cooling of buildings; this incudes both agricultural greenhouses and greenhouses suited to host people. As a result, it is a trans-disciplinary work deriving its areas of concern from a broad range of study areas, spanning from environmental, to constructional, to structural, drawing the clarity of the approach from the fact that the topics are presented by a single author with a single voice and a designer's mindset. To achieve this, the book adopts a composite set of explanatory strategies and communication registers - including extensive support by 3D construction drawings and examples - and presents not only state-of-the-art solutions, but also experimental ones.