Written by an architect of fifty years' experience who has authored six previously acclaimed books on architecture, Architecture Laid Bare! steers you past all the promotional hype that confuses so much architectural thinking today, strips away the skin of current styles and questionable construction techniques, and gets to the very bones of what architecture is about: those unchangeable anatomical elements that make a building function -to give you a fundamental, practical, everyday knowledge of these shells that enclose us nearly waking and sleeping hour of our lives. When it comes to putting this knowledge to use, this portable reference employs the the "hands-off" approach. This in-volves describing each part of a building's design and construction for those who have neither the time nor ability to do the work, yet need to make sure that any professional who performs such labor does it right -so you will be master of your architectural fate, not its slave. This book also describes what green architecture is all about. Hence its subtitle is In Shades of Green.
About the Author: After graduating from the Cornell School of Architecture in 1964, the author worked for several prominent architects for two years, then spent a year traveling through western North Amer-ica visiting Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and other notable architecture. Be-tween 1967 and 1973 he worked as a carpenter in California and Color-ado. In 1973 he moved to Maho-pac, NY, where since he has worked as a carpenter, contractor, and registered architect. Through the years Mr. Butler has received a variety of honors for his creative work. Since the 1960s his paintings, sculptures, and other artwork have appeared in numerous public exhibitions. In 1978 he received two federal grants for his innovative environmental architectural designs. From 1978 to 1980 he taught architecture at B.O.C.E.S., a college in Westchester County. In 1986 and 1989 he received two U.S. Patents for his architectural inventions. In 1981 Mr. Butler published The Ecological House, which introduced many ideas that are further advanced in this volume. In 1984 he authored the Architectural and Engin-eering Calculations Manual, published by McGraw-Hill, which was the first book of its kind whose algebraic formulas were formatted for easy use by computers. In 1998, after ten years of labor, he authored McGraw-Hill's Stand-ard Handbook of Architectural Engineering, a massive 1070-page volume for the general architect that includes an interactive disk of the book's 1,000 equations that allows each to be solved automatically by computer. In 2001 and 2002 he published two books for professional engineers, totaling 1,540 pages, titled Arch-itectural En-gineering Design: Structural Systems and Architectural Engineer-ing Design: Mechanical Systems, both of which volumes also include computerized disks of the book's equations. Also in 2002 Mr. Butler authored the Architectural Formulas Pocket Reference, a simplified version of his two professional engineering books that includes "the formulas and nothing but the formulas" plus introductory text. The above six books may be viewed at Amazon.com. With the last four works above and the advent of computers Mr. Butler's artistic interests turned toward typography, and he subsequently authored seven self-published books on computer typography. This work may be viewed at bufontforge.com. Regarding the present volume, the author wrote its text, prepared its ink drawings, formatted its pages, and designed its typefaces and symbols.