Author(s): Brenda Vale

Environment

Brenda and Robert Vale's revolutionary book, The Autonomous House, was a manifesto offering down-to-earth suggestions for building homes that neither pollute the earth nor squander its resources. It received tremendous international praise, but nearly twenty years passed before the Vales turned their groundbreaking ideas into reality, a process laid bare in this book. The New Autonomous House documents the design and construction of a four-bedroom house in the Midlands, one without mains water or sewerage but with the means to produce power from the sun and the wind, and the facilities to collect drinking-water from the rain. The Vales have a simple but dramatic message - that it is possible to live in a building that is at once inexpensive, practical and kind to the planet, and that liberates its owners from utility bills. Their book is a blueprint of green architecture for future generations.