John Farmer

Greenshift John Farmer First edition

Although concern for green issues is now widespread in architecture as well as elsewhere, there is little the architect, or the general reader, can turn to in order to help put into context the various attempts now being made to design in green ways.

For some designers this means retreating from mass-production and high technology in favour of a sophisticated knowing primitivism, while for others the mass industrial and scientific techniques that have contributed to our various ecological crises are seen as crucial to solving them.


The book is in six parts, comprising twenty chapters grouped chronologically and thematically. In many of these the house is used as a focus for discussion. The book as a whole is a history of modern architecture as seen from a green standpoint. The last chapters look at the variety of green directions at present being pursued and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the options available technically, as well as what green architecture looks like compared to the modern and other buildings of the present and past.


Green Shift provides an alternative reading of the development of modern architecture
It places an emphasis on the changing attitudes towards nature and the emergence of green thinking
Presents a history of modern architecture as seen from a green standpoint