Featuring a new Gaia House prototype design, a new Charter for Natural Building, and completely updated appendices on natural paints and varnishes, household cleaners, and indoor air pollution, as well as a mail-order resource list for furniture, carpeting, water filtration, and textiles, The New Natural House Book will help you create a better future.

The New Natural House Book:
 Creating a Healthy, Harmonious and Ecologically Sound Home

How to: 1. Use the latest toxin-free materials; 2. Improve air and water quality; 3. Save energy; 4. Minimize maintenance; 5. Create green space; 6. Combat environmental hazards; 7. Incorporate aromatherapy and feng shui; 8. Design a personal space for contemplation; 9. Build an exercise room; 10. Use color, texture, and design to create a nourishing, stress-free environment for your family

The physical environments we live, work and play in have a direct, but often unrecognized, effect on the harmony of our lives. Becoming aware of our interactions with these spaces and making changes to improve them can help create balance and emotional well-being. Healing Environments provides ways in which to reconfigure our lifestyles and surroundings that will enhance our lives and spiritual beings. For instance, adding accents of silver, the color of the moon, can aid creativity, soothe emotions and soften the ambience in our surroundings. An architect by profession, Carol Venolia guides us beyond the structural dimensions and into the sensorial realms of the spaces we inhabit. This book is presented as a way to get to know ourselves and evaluate our environments, as well as to teach us how the components of color, sound, temperature, light, arrangement and texture can be cultivated to create a healthier and more fufilling existence.
Excerpted from Healing Environments by Carol Venolia (as appears in The WomanSource Catalog & Review). Copyright(c) 1988. Reprinted by permission, all rights reserved

The Natural House Book, first published in 1989, originated the phrase "natural house" and established the presence of the Green movement in home design. Author David Pearson has updated and expanded this eco-aware homebuilder's classic with new resource listings, a new photo-essay in the introduction, and revised text describing the latest and best developments in natural construction.
The first part of the book deals with the interaction between the home and the external environment, the second part with the home's components, and the third part with the design of the living space itself. Throughout the book, well-drawn illustrations and numerous photographs show how enlightened home design makes Green living easier by encouraging builders and residents to take advantage of natural light and heat. They're also a powerful tool for convincing those who might not yet be committed to natural living, as many of the homes are luxurious and warm looking. (The natural bathrooms are so beautiful and comfortable, one can only wonder why anyone settles for the prefab "luxury master baths" that the construction industry pushes on new homebuilders.) It's truly a book that takes a larger view, appealing not only to those with fewer resources who have always wanted to live simply, but also to those who can afford to live where they want, in effect saying to them, "Our way is better--for the environment and for you."

Featuring specific "how-to" projects written by specialists, as well as an index organized by city and region, this book is a natural for home builders, renovators, decorators, and fixer-uppers who cherish the environment now--and want to preserve it for future generations. Provides dozens of ideas on how to create a home that is compatible with holistic living, covering such topics as construction materials, soft energy, healthy lighting, natural furnishings, and nontoxic home care.

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