Blue Dunes - by Jesse Keenan & Claire Weisz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Blue Dunes chronicles the design of artificial barrier islands developed to protect the Mid-Atlantic region of North America in the face of climate change. It narrates the complex, and sometimes contradictory, research agenda of an unlikely team of analysts, architects, ecologists, engineers, physicists, and planners addressing extreme weather and sea level rise within the practical limitations of science, politics, and economics.

Review Quotes

Highly detailed, interdisciplinary, and technically complex, Blue Dunes also manages to be a rather beautiful book. . . . But most important of all, it is a window into the types of engineering and scientific ingenuity, not to mention political and economic will, that will be necessary to guard against the effects of climate change.--Ray Bert "Civil Engineering"

The primary strength of this edited volume is the treatment of the complexity resulting from the combination of experts with such disparate backgrounds, including design, coastal oceanographic modeling, risk modeling, coastal ecology, planning, economics, and others.-- "Choice"

About the Author

Jesse M. Keenan, Ph.D., J.D., LL.M. is an Associate Professor and social scientist within the faculty of the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Keenan's research focuses on the intersection of climate change adaptation and the built environment, including aspects of design, engineering, regulation, planning and financing. Keenan holds concurrent appointments as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Claire Weisz, FAIA is an architect, urbanist, and educator. She is a founding principal of the award-winning firm WXY architecture + urban design, whose New York City-based practice focuses on innovative approaches to public space, buildings, and cities. WXY is a leader in advancing resilience practices at the intersection of architecture, planning, landscape and urban design. Weisz is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and has taught design and planning studios at Yale University, New York University, Cornell University, and the City University of New York.

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