Reading Corner - Dreaming Green Book Review

By Caitlin Costello
Going Green" is one of the latest trends. These days nobody wants to get caught carrying a plastic bag or throwing a water bottle in the trash. However, for some people, "going green" is much more than a fad- it's a lifestyle. Dreaming Green was coauthored by husband and wife duo, Paul Gleicher (LEED accredited architect and founder and president of the prestigious Gleicher Design Group) and Lisa Sharkey (senior vice president and director of creative development at HarperCollins), who committed to living green before renovating their Upper West Side Manhattan brownstone. For the Sharkey-Gleicher family, which also includes the couple's three young children, this meant that practically everything in their home would be "sustainable or recycled, super-energy efficient, and chemical free."

Dreaming-green, unlike other "coffee table" design books, Dreaming Green isn't only about beautiful photographs and design plans. For each of the seventeen eco-friendly homes featured in this book, there are up to five pages of detailed explanation about what types of materials went into transforming that home and how they were obtained, as well insight into the design process. Dreaming Green features a variety of homes from an "eco-farmhouse" in upstate New York to an "eco-manor" in Atlanta, Georgia.

For those who are considering making environmentally conscious changes in their own homes, there are over ten pages of resources in the back of the book, providing readers with access to many of the materials utilized in the featured homes. The "Resources" section includes everything from eco-friendly paints to kitchen cabinetry to flooring to geothermal heating, and much more. This section alone makes Dreaming Green an invaluable resource for people who are seriously planning to renovate their own homes.

Gleicher, Paul, and Lisa Sharkey. Dreaming Green. 1st ed. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2008.