This book features projects and essays that critique the current approach to "green" architecture, and demonstrate a more appropriate way to address the challenges posed by the environmental crisis. Most contemporary green architecture relies upon unremarkable technologies and materials to reduce resource consumption, but fails to produce a necessary shift in the public's perception of or behavior toward the environment. In contrast, the work featured in this book demonstrates how green technology can exceed mere sustainability by also producing spectacular experiences that positively transform the public's understanding of the natural world and humanity's relation to it. By dramatizing the constantly negotiated relationship between humanity and the environment, the "souped-up" green architecture featured in this book transforms "greenness" from a simple measurement of environmental performance into an actively engaged and highly conscious lived reality—resulting in a new way of experiencing and understanding the world that is inherently more ecological.

Doug Jackson is an architect whose work focuses on technological expression and the user-transformation of space. He formerly served as partner at the award-winning and internationally recognized office of Jones, Partners: Architecture, and during his tenure was responsible for the design and management of a variety of projects, as graphic designer for the firm's first monograph Instrumental Form, and as graphic designer and coauthor of the firm's second monograph, El Segundo. Jackson is now principal of the Doug Jackson Design Office, whose constructed and speculative design work has been widely published and exhibited. In addition, he is also associate professor of architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. Doug received his MArch from Princeton University in 2000, and his BArch from Virginia Tech in 1993.