Written by an architect of fifty years' experience who has authored six previously acclaimed books on architecture, Architecture Laid Bare steers you past all the promotional hype that confuses so much architectural thinking today, strips away the skin of current styles and questionable construction techniques, and gets to the very bones of what architecture is about: those unchangeable anatomical elements that make a building function -to give you a fundamental, practical, everyday knowledge of these shells that enclose us nearly waking and sleeping hour of our lives. When it comes to putting this knowledge to use, this portable reference employs the the "hands-off" approach. This involves describing each part of a building's design and construction for those who have neither the time nor ability to do the work, yet need to make sure that any professional who performs such labor does it right -so you will be master of your architectural fate, not its slave. This book also describes what green architecture is all about. Hence its subtitle is In Shades of Green."