Environmental Data: Usages of architectural and urban space can be intensified by responding to season and weather.
Synthesis and Shape: A collection of essays envisions viable urban patterns from the social and ecological realities of place.
The environmental impact of building materials: The book chapter focusses on the concepts of embodied energy.
in: Roaf, S., Fuentes, M. and Thomas, S. (eds) (2001) Ecohouse: A Design Guide, Oxford: Architectural Press.
Bohn's research centres on exploring sustainable architectural and urban design from a social and ecological perspective. Her long-term collaboration with André Viljoen has systematically explored the embodied energy of materials alongside their multiple use and engagement with the urban landscape.
The research for this chapter has been carried out through comparative study of published material in accredited books and journals and through in-depth analysis of two low-energy houses in the UK, one being the Oxford Ecohouse (Roaf 1995) including the first domestic photovoltaic roof in the UK. Contributions to the book were commissioned from expert authors providing first class information on design issues including health, air infiltration, mould and insulation.
Bohn’s contribution (with Viljoen) focuses on the concepts of embodied energy and embodied emissions as considered in relation to building materials and taking into account primary energy consumption, recycling, transportation and resource depletion. The chapter discusses both concepts in detail drawing conclusions on how they relate to one another and to the building process as a whole using this method to assess sustainability in architecture.
The three editions of this book (2001, 2004 (updated), 2007 (updated)) have sold 30,000 copies and been translated into Chinese, Russian and Portuguese. The book has been widely reviewed by, for example, the Solar Trade Organisation.
in: Hewitt, M. and Hagan, S. (eds) (2001) City Fights: Debates on urban sustainability, London: James & James.
Entitled Synthesis and Shape: Designs on the City, Bohn's chapter, co-written with André Viljoen, aligns with editor Mark Hewitt’s proposition and attempt to envision temporal human and environmental interactions that can evolve viable urban patterns from the social and ecological realities of place. Such a position then permits contribution to an optimism balancing author Prof. Volker Giencke’s (Innsbruck, Austria) counter proposition that sustainability may destroy creativity and the poetry that is driven by uncertainty and unbounded possibilities.
City Fights captures the extensive debate that resulted from the international London symposium Energy and Urban Strategies bringing together invited contributors from a variety of disciplines with the aim of developing better and more sustainable cities in environmental, social and economic terms. The result is a passionate and illuminating publication on this significant question, bringing into focus the complexity and diversity of the issues involved and acknowledging that the concept of the 'sustainable city' remains contingent, with nothing fixed, mapped or agreed upon.
Arguing for a holistic and sustainable approach, Bohn (with Viljoen) presented the position of architect and architecture in the context of changing societal values, considering whether and how sustainability might provide a fertile context for creative architectural endeavour. Using projects from their own design research, their chapter underpins its arguments with architectural examples that visualise a sustainable urban, ethical and socially responsible future.
