Places of the Soul

For Christopher Day, architecture isn’t just about the appearance of buildings but how they’re experienced as places to be in. Occupants’ experience can differ radically from designers’ intentions as their concerns and thinking differ. Additionally, multi-sensory ambience, spatial sequential experience and embodied spirit resonate in the human soul. Sustainable design means much more than energy-efficiency: if sustainable buildings don’t also nourish the soul, occupant-building interaction will lack care and eco-technologies won’t be used efficiently. This major revision of his classic text builds on more than forty years of experience ecological design across a range of climates, cultures and budgets, and 25 years hands-on building.

Treating buildings as environments intrinsic to their surroundings, the book explores consensus design, economic and social sustainability, and how a listening approach can grow architectural ideas organically from the interacting, sometimes conflicting, requirements of place, people and situation.

This third edition, comprehensively revised to incorporate new knowledge and address new issues, continues Day’s departure from orthodox contemporary architecture, offering eye-opening insights and practical design applications. These principles and guidelines will be of interest and value to architects, builders, planners, developers and homeowners alike.

Reviews of the first edition

... one of the seminal architecture books of recent times

Professor Tom Wooley, Architects Journal

The 'bible' of many architects and those interested in architecture.

Centre for Alternative Technology

... an inspiration to all those who care about the influence of the environment on Man’s health and well-being.

Barrie May, The Scientific and Medical Network

At last an architect has written a sensitive and caring book on the effects of buildings on all our lives.

Here’s Health

This gentle book offers a route out of the nightmare of so much callous modern construction. I was inspired.

Colin Amery, The Financial Times