As buildings are responsible for fifty per cent of CO₂ emissions, their design has become the focus of intense technical scrutiny. Knowing how to build more technically efficient, or ecologically responsible, buildings, and being able to assemble the social resources to do so, requires different forms of knowledge and practice. There is wide contestation over the optimal pathways to greener buildings design and great diversity in practices of sustainable architecture.

This volume brings together leading researchers from across the European Union and North America both to illustrate the diversity of practice and to provide a critical commentary on this key debate. The reader is provided with an introduction to competing perspectives on the sustainable architecture debate, international exemplars of differing practice and an overview of new theoretical and methodological resources for understanding and meeting the conceptual, social and technical challenges of sustainable architecture.