From the inside flap:

Thousand-year-old earth-sheltered houses built in China, passive solar heating ideas used by the Pueblo Indians over nine hundred years ago, natural air conditioning systems built in the Middle East in the thirteenth century, modular building techniques used in Japan for more than five hundred years – these are just a few of the several hundred design ideas, developed by history’s anonymous builders, that are studied in Commonsense Architecture. The refreshingly practical nature of these designs clearly reflects a responsiveness to external forces and to human needs and inspires both a rational approach to construction and an appreciation of the built environment.

In hundreds of pen-and-ink sketches, on subjects ranging from solar heating to stairways, the author gives a detailed introduction to the many lessons indigenous architecture offers about creating practical buildings that make efficient and economical use of material, capital, and human resources while working with natural forces rather than trying to overpower them.