Book excerpt: This book is the first of four dealing with bioclimatic design and construction by focusing on the most basic and polyvalent of modern environmental systems: the bioclimatic greenhouse, the “Swiss-army chainsaw” of architecture. More specifically, this first volume focuses on preliminary bioclimatic design of greenhouses, laying down fundamental principles that are also likely to be invaluable in designing, in more general terms, bioclimatic and low-energy architecture, with low environmental impact. This multi-volume book covers both free-standing greenhouses that can naturally heat and cool themselves, and lean-to greenhouses that support the natural heating and cooling of buildings; this includes both agricultural greenhouses and greenhouses suited to host people. As a result, it is a trans-disciplinary work deriving its areas of concern from a broad range of study areas, spanning from environmental, to constructional, to structural, drawing the clarity of the approach from the fact that the topics are presented by a single author with a single voice and a designer’s mindset. To achieve this, the book adopts a composite set of explanatory strategies and communication registers – including extensive support by 3D construction drawings and examples – and presents not only stateof-the-art solutions, but also experimental ones.