Architecture: Designing A Living System with Sim Van der Ryn

Sim Van der Ryn is an architect, author, and educator. He is President of the Ecological Design Collaborative and has, for over forty years, been at the forefront of integrating ecological principles into the built environment, creating multi-scale solutions driven by nature’s intelligence. He served as California’s first energy conscious state architect and is emeritus professor of architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley. He was founder of the Farallones Institute, now known as the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

His books include:

• The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City (Random House 1982)
• Sustainable Communities - A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs and Towns (co-author Peter Calthorpe) (Sierra Club Books 1991)
• Ecological Design, Tenth Anniversary Edition (co-author Stuart Cowan) (Island Press 2007)
• The Toilet Papers: Recycling Waste and Conserving Water (Chelsea Green Publishing 1999)
• Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting People, Nature, and Self (Island Press 2013)

To learn more about Sim Van der Ryn’s work go to www.vanderryn.com.

Host: Justine Willis Toms   Interview Date: 1/22/2014   Program Number: C0291

More from Sim Van der Ryn

A full one-hour Flagship program on this subject is available for purchase and download:

Designing With Nature In Mind with Sim Van der Ryn