Sim Van der Ryn takes his shirt off (and hates the term ’sustainability’)
I must say, I have never been to a presentation where the first thing the speaker does is take his shirt off. I know I shouldn’t focus on this, but it’s true and definitely leaves an impression, especially when that speaker is Sim Van der Ryn, a leading pioneer in ecological design.
Ryn took his shirt, a very nice red checked dress one, off to don the new t-shirt of the Living Future Conference, here in Vancouver, B.C. The shirt is charcoal and has a simple message on its front that says ‘living.’
Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia, introduced Ryn as the “father and grandfather of the green design movement.” To learn about the many things Ryn has done in his career, press here.
Ryn spoke about beauty, inspiration and design. Being a conference largely focused on sustainability, you’d expect him to address that topic. He did at the end of his talk in a way that might have shocked some in the audience as he announced that he did not like the term one bit.
“It’s there, we’re going to keep using it, but I don’t like it,” he said. “Part of it is wound up in the metrics… the reality is we don’t have the metrics to measure this stuff.”
Sustainability
For most people, Ryn said sustainability means buying a Prius and putting solar panels on your roof. It’s not bad, he said, “but it’s a little too comfortable in a world where most of the world is not going to get by. For me, it’s comfort food.” (For more on this topic, see my previous post on Paul Hawken’s talk).
Instead, Ryn prefers the term “ecological design” because it encompasses the process, rather than just the end state of design, which is what he said ’sustainability’ does.
What do you think? Which term do you prefer? Is Ryn right or is he missing the point of sustainability?
Beautiful buildings
Ryn asked the audience an interesting question: when was the last time a building was so beautiful it made you cry? Most likely, he said, it was an old building, because much of our new construction just “is not beautiful.”
That sent me down memory lane. For me the last time a building brought me to such an emotional state was the first time I stood before La Pedrera by Gaudi in Barcelona. The building’s curves and astonishing form took my breathe away. When was the last time a building made you feel like this? And was it recent? Take a moment to comment on the building and what it was you liked….
The next human ”story”
Ryn also went over Christopher Alexander’s principals of beauty and presented physical examples of each that were visually stunning. He also said human kind has lived in different “stories”, from becoming human to developing agriculture to the machinization of our world. During the industrial revolution, he said the organic world was gradually taken apart piece by piece from flour to the pig to the building of a car.
This next story, he said, is what the environmental movement is working on now: reassembling the organic world to transform the mechanized world we live in. He said he sees this as the primary goal today.
In that vein, systems like the living building will become very important. “The living building challenge is to me the way to go for us in architecture and it’ll go further than what it is now,” he said, though he added that he thought food would become a more important part of the challenge.
Ryn’s speech also referenced Paul Hawken’s talk earlier this week. Like I said yesterday, Hawken’s statement that the world is quickly changing and the movement needs to be prepared for a new world is filtering through everybody’s talks.
If you’re at Living Future, what did you think of the conference or the talk? let me know, I’d love to hear what you think!
Tags: Famous speakers, Jason McLennan, LEED, Living Building, Living Future Conference, Sim Van der Ryn, Vancouver BC
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April 21st, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Linguistics are often the barrier for our successful communication as a society. “Sustainability” as Sim noted is not the best word to reflect an “Ecological Design”. I would on the other hand, suggest that since it is the mainstream word I might challenge Sim by claiming we might need to better communicate the definition of sustainability.
Sustainability infers an inherent requirement for us to design and build as an integrated (non-destructive) piece of our complex ecosystem. If achieved we have done something sustainable. Currently we are failing to design and build without multiple forms of ecosystem destruction; thus the need to strive for “sustainability”.
That being said, I can understand how Sim might be frustrated by the over use of the word for things that are far from “sustainable” resulting in a diluted message.