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Here are what people are saying about Malcolm Wells' Books.
InfraStructures
The environmental damage caused by the sheer physical
impact of public
constructionoften called infrastructure has been
given little if any attention. That oversight has been corrected
in this latest book by Malcolm Wells. I hope it will move
our policymakers to build with more compassion for the plants
and animals that share this time with us.
David Brower, Earth Steward
"Infrastructure" is what the politicians
dismiss as the "pothole problem."
They do so at their own risk, for it may be their own constituentsvoters-who
are the next to be needlessly, senselessly
killed when an unsafe bridge crumbles during rush-hour traffic.
The potholes have teeth.
As
always, trust Malcolm Wells to conceive unique, visionary,
planet-loving solutions. With his plan for infrastructure,
tomorrow's historic covered bridges may have flowers adorning
their roofs, and the clover-leaf highways of the next century
will be awash in real clover.
Cynthia G. Wagner, Managing Editor, The Futurist
Gentle
Architecture
Recen tly
I played an architect in a movie called Indecent Proposal.
Because I knew nothing about architecture, I read a number
of books that I thought might be helpful. Without a doubt
the most inspiring among them was a book called Gentle
Architecture by Malcolm Wells.
I
had no idea how much architecture has contributed to the growing
ecological problems in this world and was amazed at how simply
these problems could be dealt with. Certainly in the architecture
of the future we have no choice but to learn how to build
in a way that doesn't compromise ecology.
Mr.
Wells is a visionary at a time when this world most needs
visionaries. To those of you who are lucky enough to have
picked up this book, I encourage you to share his vision and
perhaps one day when this world is a little greener we'll
be able to thank Malcolm Wells for his contribution.
Woody Harrelson, Actor
Build
a Better Birdhouse
This
is an exciting book for anyone who wants to build more than
'just a birdhouse' As an architect, Malcolm Wells is concerned
with the way man-made structures interact with nature. His
designs reflect that point of view, while managing to provide
various birds with suitable accomodations...A unique and welcome
combination.
Wild Bird magazine
Earth-Sheltered
House: An Architect's Sketchbook
A
classic, written by a legend. This book should be required
reading for everyone making decisions about the built environment.
Steve Heckeroth, award-winning solar designer/builder
Wells' designs seem almost fanciful, but are indeed based
on practical considerations and currently usable techniques
and materials, helping open up a whole new concept of building
based on one of the oldest known: caves and burrows. These
are "caves and burrows" of soaring imagination and
creative, 21st century brilliance.
Mark A. Hetts, Amazon.com Review
Alternative architect Malcolm Wells originally published this
book in 1990 as Underground Buildings. The author
acts as an apologist for using both earthen walls and passive
solar design to create an integrated, efficient, and intuitive
home in tune with what nature has to offer rather than in
forceful opposition to natural laws and properties. The book
stresses energy efficiency throughout the entire year and
provides clear explanatory notes connecting the "how's"
to the "why's."
Stephen Ford
The Earth-Sheltered House: An Architect's Sketchbook
makes a cogent case for exploiting the thermal properties
of earthen walls in conjunction with passive solar energy
to create a home that's warm in winter, cool in summer, designed
intuitively rather than artificially, and is energy efficient
year-round. We're betting The Earth-Sheltered House is one
book that Wells' fans, old and new, won't be able to resist
digging into.
Marguirite Lamb, Mother Earth News, Feb/Mar
1999
Sandtiquity
Armed
with this book you are not merely a beach day-tripper. You
are at once a visionary and historian, an architectural genius,
a builder of empires! Clear instruction and step-by-step photographs
make it easy to achieve the same incredible results for a
whole series of seemingly monumental structures. The many
ideas and extraordinary work in Sandtiquity
are bound to transform beaches everywhere!
Amazon.com Review
Baseball
Talk
Malcolm
Wells has put together 190 pages of cartoons, that's right
cartoons, which illustrate that what you hear, may not be
the picture that comes to mind. The pictures are literal translations
and they are funny. A good gift for the die-hard baseball
or sports fan and a price that makes it affordable as well.
Overall a easy, funny read.
Michael Woznicki, Amazon.com Top 10 Reviewer
Recovering America
In
Recovering America: A More Gentle Way to Build, Wells
illustrates his case against environmentally unfriendly architectureacres
of parking lots, sterile housing tracts, and industrial parks
devoid of greenerywith numerous aerial photographs taken
on his helicopter rides across the United States. Wells, who
is also an artist, offers in addition many full-color views
of his "more gentle" alternative way of building.
Many will be intrigued
by his earth-friendly revisions of sports arenas, superhighway
interchanges, malls, airports, and his version of a new Disneyland--with
all of its roads, parking lots, and amusements covered by
tons of earth, and just a few spires rising above a restored
landscape of desert flowers.
Colorfully illustrated and handwritten, this deeply personal
volume offers nature-revering and soul-cheering solutions
to
overdevelopment. Describing what he has seen happening to
America--the obliteration of the landscape by
developers--architect Malcolm Wells envisions earth-covered
living environments as an alternative to paving over nature
to
make it fit for human habitation.
The Futurist magazine, Nov-Dec 2000
Our
favorite visionary eco-architect takes us on a tour of America's
covered-over land, infrastructured seashores, and vast swaths
of parking lots"land contempt at its most flagrant."
His imaginative renderings then re-cover it all with earth
and greenery. Factories, strip malls, airports, prisons, the
Pentagon, the Superdome, and Disneyland all fall to his impish
drawing and painting skills at using nature to convert lifeless
eyesores into living architecture. At a gently priced [seven]
bucks, this has got to be the book bargain of the year.
Jeff Gates, coauthor of The Ownership Solution

This delightful little book is a real bargain. Hand-lettered
and illustrated by the author, it gives an unusual aerial
portrait of our landscape. Photographs of vast expanses of
asphalt are transformed through the author's watercolors into
lush landscapes of greenery. This is not a how-to book, but
a labor of love, conveying the author's unique vision of a
greener America.
Environmental Building News, Vol. 9 No. 3
Not one to mince words, "Mac" Wells, an occasional
illustrator for this paper, hopes readers will finally get
his message, that designing with nature instead of paving
it over with asphalt is healthier and much more beautiful.
You can read his latest, Recovering America: A More
Gentle Way to Build, in an hour. But you might want
to linger over his photos and drawings of ingenious underground
houses, which feature flowers and grasses on top of roofs
and interiors that stay cool in summer, warm in winter. There's
no type in this self-published book; Mac's legible and lovely
printing easily pulls you through.
Betsy Marston, High Country News

Passive
Solar Energy
A classic treatment of the topic, enhanced by Wells' entertaining
and clearly informative drawings.
Rocky Mountain Institute
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