Design for Life: Sim Van der Ryn Accepts Athena Award
Sim Van der Ryn, environmental design leader, former California state architect, author, and educator accepts the Athena Award. Van der Ryn's acceptance speech is critical of the "green" movement, but offers new ways of thinking about sustainable building and planning for the future.
Here are some excerpts:
"There’s no two words that seem to be used more today – and yet with very little agreement as to what they mean - then ‘sustainable’ and ‘green’…these words are trendy and they make for great marketing, but I think they also can be very smug and really lead us from what we are trying to do."
"My lifetime belief is that architecture is more than form and function – it’s about the integration of all the elements that allow buildings to be what they are. A building is an organism and cities are complex eco-systems connecting natural design and human systems."