Designing Better Buildings

Design is widely recognised as the key to improving the quality of the built environment. This well-illustrated book comprises fifteen chapters written by leading practitioners, clients, academics and other experts, and presents the latest thinking on what design quality is and how to achieve it. For design practitioners and their clients alike, the book provides evidence to justify greater focus on, and investment in, design. It summarizes the benefits that arise from good design - such as civic pride in the urban environment, the stimulation of urban regeneration, corporate identity, occupant productivity and health in offices, improved learning in schools, better patient recovery rates in hospitals, as well as reduced environmental impact. These benefits are illustrated through case study examples.

Sebastian Macmillan trained as an architect at Liverpool University, before writing his Ph.D. at the Royal College of Art. He is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and ran an architectural practice for ten years. In 1984 he set up Eclipse, a consultancy specialising in research on the design and management of the built environment. He has written many publications for the government's Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme and, more recently, for the Construction Best Practice Programme. He has a part-time appointment at Cambridge University's Martin Centre where he is responsible for coordinating the Centre's research programme.