Green architect and urbanist Sim Van der Ryn receives Athena Award

Sim Van der Ryn began earning an international reputation as the “father of the green building” during his tenure as California State Architect in Governor Jerry Brown’s administration. His pioneering role advancing sustainable urbanism received overdue recognition when CNU made him the 10th recipient of the Athena Award in a ceremony September 26 in San Francisco.  After receiving the award, Van der Ryn delivered the keynote lecture at CNU’s Sustainable Communities 2008 conference, which explored the past and future of a field Van der Ryn helped to establish.
CNU cofounder Peter Calthorpe spoke at length about his longtime colleague and said Van der Ryn’s legacy makes him an ideal recipient of the Athena Award — given to those who have laid the groundwork for New Urbanism and sustainable community design. “The more I started thinking about it, the clearer it became in my mind,” Calthorpe said. “The roots of so much of what we all work towards were created by Sim out of a messy soup. It wasn’t at all obvious that the kinds of whole-systems thinking that he engaged in could put together the vision that in the end we all ride upon. Sim was the first one to say how all the professions integrate. Recognizing him is very important and long overdue.”

Best known for green building innovations
Van der Ryn is best known for inventing green building systems that are now taken for granted — from solar roof panels to rainwater catchment systems — but he also applied his talents to issues beyond the building itself. An inquisitive mind led him to pester early bosses with questions about all aspects of building and community design, even those that others considered mundane, he explained. Van der Ryn’s work on sustainable neighborhoods and communities led to the creation of Marin Solar Village on an old military base in Marin County, California. “It was like the first new urbanist suburban community,” said Calthorpe, coauthor with Van der Ryn of the seminal book Sustainable Communities in 1986.  “The features were a laundry list of what LEED-ND calls for — actually a lot of stuff that LEED-ND doesn’t get into. It featured on-site food production, on-site energy production, mixed uses. It was a reuse of buildings. Going from the towers in the park to the walkable street was something that he laid out at that time [35 years ago] as an urban model, as how we should proceed. And for me, this has been the touchstone of urbanism ever since.”
In addition to Calthorpe, Van der Ryn colleagues such as Stewart Brand, Peter Schwartz, and Judy Corbett — with expertise in fields as varied as scenario planning, social sciences and social networking, and urban planning advocacy — contributed to the rich portrait that emerged of Van der Ryn. One of the most important things that happened during Sim’s term of service as state architect was the adoption of energy conservation building standards which have resulted in California using less energy per capita than any other state, said Corbett, executive director of the California-based Local Government Commission. “It helped us create an economy that’s vital and that’s not so dependent on foreign oil,” she said.
In afternoon appearances and a panel led by CNU board member Jacky Grimshaw and joined by earlier speakers, T4America campaign cochair Shelley Poticha and Amanda Eaken of the Natural Resources Defense Council helped explore cutting-edge policy and legislative efforts incorporating the concepts of sustainable communities. Julie Lave Johnston of the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research appeared on the panel just four days before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 375, a landmark bill that requires regions and communities to use their land-use and transportation plans to reduce carbon. Qualifying transit-oriented mixed-use projects could receive streamlined environmental reviews.
Before joining that discussion, Van der Ryn charmed and challenged the audience with a wise speech in which he critiqued the very concept — sustainability — that he is credited with establishing. “There are no two words that seem to be used more today, yet with very little agreement as to what they mean, than ‘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,” he said. “What we need to create are resilient communities, resiliency at every scale. To me it is more than just cities. Resiliency has to include the basic elements — it’s soil, it’s water, it’s energy, it’s land, buildings, communities, and a social structure … . Sustainability is a static concept. Resiliency is dynamic.”