Baruch Givoni (Jerusalem, 1920 - 2019) was an Israeli architect. He was one of the most recognized specialists in bioclimatic architecture in the world, mainly after the publication in 1969 of his book Man, Climate and Architecture ("Man, Climate and Architecture"). His field of work covered energy and buildings, urban atmosphere and climate, and solar energy.[1] He developed the "Givoni Diagram" for the bioclimatic control and design of buildings, used in many architecture schools around the world.

Born on January 10, 1920 in Jerusalem, then under British rule. Givoni was an architect, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa in 1953. Master of Hygiene at the Graduate School of Public Health of the University of Pittsburgh in 1959 and Doctor of Public Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Jerusalem in 1963.

He served as a professor and researcher at the Building Research Station (1970-1977) and in Architecture and Urban Design (1973-1977) at the Technion. He was Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States (1977-1997) and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (1977-1984). He was a visiting professor at numerous universities in the United States, South America, Australia and Europe.

He was co-founder of the international association Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA). He died on December 24, 2019 in Israel.

Chapters

The book's index contains the following sections that hundreds of authors throughout the world later followed to create their works.

Content

Throughout 365 pages, it presents the relationship between human comfort, climate and architecture, understanding "architecture" as the building that contains and protects man and his activities. For this, his work reaches a synthesis in a climogram made on a psychrometric diagram where he draws a hygrothermal comfort zone for winter and summer. Then it proposes other areas where it is possible to achieve comfort through the incorporation and/or application of passive design strategies. Outside of these areas, the use of thermomechanical environmental conditioning systems for both heating and cooling becomes necessary.