Books
Reducing Emissions
in the 2020s.
“Thwart Climate Change Now: Reducing Embodied Carbon Brick by Brick” addresses an imperative—to slow the pace of climate change within the coming decade—before it’s too late.
While climate policy typically focuses on future decarbonization 10 to 20 years out, temperatures continue to rise. Greenhouse gases emitted upfront from the materials fabrication, construction, and renovation of our physical environment—embodied emissions—accelerate the rate of global warming now. Sadly, they increase atmospheric carbon before our buildings and infrastructure are even used. Often ignored or deemed too perplexing to resolve, the need to reduce embodied emissions immediately is the subject of this book.
Written for a variety of readers—from policymakers and legislators to architects and developers—Thwart Climate Change Now addresses how to tackle the built environment’s “embodied” carbon emissions, highlighting specific design and policy issues that overlook their own contribution to atmospheric carbon. The book brings together the science of climate change, sustainable design, and green policies in a language accessible to a diverse readership, followed by case study examples to support design, policy, and legislative recommendations to slow emissions growth in the near term.
Published by the Environmental Law Institute ELI Press, November 2021
How buildings interact with people and the natural environment.
“Buildings are for People: Human Ecological Design” offers a new approach to the process of conceiving architectural design, one that considers the interactions of the built environment with people and the natural environment.
The book exposes our visceral and experiential connections to buildings, and how they intervene directly with our ecosystem, natural environment and sense of place. It brings to light our ability to utilize a building's surfaces, shape and materiality to synergize with the energy and forces of nature for a more green and sustainable architecture. Buildings are for People addresses many of the roadblocks to successful design, such as issues in education, the profession, regulation and the industry's institutions—roadblocks rarely discussed.
Most importantly, Buildings are for People: Human Ecological Design highlights the obvious, that buildings are built for people, a fact that seems overlooked during the last half-century.
Published by Libri Publishing Green Frigate Books, UK, July 2016
Rural and city contrasts still present in this 21st century.
People and places in Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia.
“Contrasts 21c” is a photo essay about people and places. Expressing a sensitivity to the human condition and the built and natural environments, it brings to life an eye-opening pictorial about human adaptability in lands of stunning beauty—Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Mountainous terrains, lowlands and banks of the Mekong and Red rivers are home to a rich diversity of cultures—an admixture of ancient tradition and present-day reality. From linear villages lining roadsides and shorelines to small hamlets and large cities, this is a story best experienced by exploration, best told through its images—the people, faces, their eyes and often their smiles. "Contrasts 21c" draws attention to the conflicts between self-sufficiency and sustainability in a present-day reality.
A 9 inch x 10 inch Coffee-Table Book with 18 inch wide 2-page spreads, "Contrasts 21c" transports the reader to distant locales to unveil incredible contrasts between rural and city life still present in this 21st century. 234 pages of Caplan’s select photographs interspersed with text and maps, tell this story of 21st century contrasts—the cultural diversity of this region and its challenges.
