ECOSA GUEST SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

STEVE BADANES received his undergraduate training at Wesleyan University and his Masre’s of Architecture from Princeton University. He has received grants from National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation and a fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Badanes is a co-founder of Jersey Devil, a widely published firm known for its energy efficient designs and innovative use of materials. At the University of Washington, Badanes holds the Howard Wright Endowed Chair, leads design-build studios focusing on community service projects in the Seattle area, and teaches in the Design Build Mexico program, which won an AIA Education Honor Award in 1997. Steve Badanes’ contributions to architectural practice are evidenced in two publications, The Jersey Devil Design/Build Book and Devil’s Workshop: 25 Years of Jersey Devil Architecture.

WILL BRUDER is an artist/architect who has worked from a desert studio in New River, Arizona for the past twenty-five years. His work is a search for pragmatically logical and poetically sensual solutions that celebrate site opportunities and user needs. Craftsman like in his concern for detail and building process, his architecture is sculptural in its unique choreography of space, movement, materials and light. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1946, Bruder earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and is self-trained as an architect. In addition to his formal education, he apprenticed under Paolo Soleri and Gunnar Birkerts and has field experience in carpentry, masonry and metal work. He was registered as an architect and opened his studio in 1974.

Over the years Bruder's 400 plus commissions have celebrated the craft of building in ways not typical in contemporary architecture today. His architecture has been widely presented in books and periodicals in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He has received numerous awards including the Record Home award in 1977, 1994 and 1999; the international Benedictus Award for the innovative use of glass in 1996 and a Rorne Prize from the American Academy to study in Rome in 1987. Bruder has exhibited and taught widely, sharing his belief that architecture is the celebration of listening in service of the human spirit and senses. His greatest professional achievement has been the Phoenix Central Library, which has become an architectural touchstone of international acclaim and great local community pride.

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PLINY FISK is Co-Director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, a non-profit organization which has been in the forefront of sustainable design and development activities since its inception in 1975. The Center links design and science to create ecologically, economically and socially viable solutions to a range of issues facing the built environment, and works with a spectrum of clients, from individual homeowners and small-scale developments to Fortune 500 corporations, and with municipal, state, and federal governments. Mr. Fisk is a frequent lecturer throughout the U.S. to professional associations, universities, and community-based organizations. The Center's life cycle planning and design methodology is becoming a recognized procedure for establishing the sustainability basis for green building, and is the focus of a two-year research project funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Fisk has served on the President's Task Force on Sustainable Communities, the AIA's Committee on the Environmental Resource Guide and is on the Advisory Board for Environmental Building News. The Center's work has been recognized by several national and international awards, including the 1992 Earth Summit Award for the City of Austin Green Builder Program, the Mexican Government's Environmental Agency (SEDUE) award for affordable housing and sustainable community design, and the 1991 DARE award presented by the National Center for Appropriate Technology. Mr. Fisk holds a B.S., M.ARCH., and M.L.ARCH. (under Ian McHarg) from the University of Pennsylvania.

BARRY FULLER is well recognized in the “paper-crete” world. He is the founder and director of the Center for Alternative Building Research, and the inventor and manufacturer of “BetR-Blok,” a cementitious paper-based building block system. He teaches throughout the West about fibrous-cement building technology and process, as well as working for general building code approval of fibrous-cement building systems. To learn more about his work see his website, www.livinginpaper.com

EDDIE JONES, Principal, Jones Studio, Inc. Architecture + Environmental Design has twenty-nine years experience in the design and production of large and small project types both in the public and private sectors. He is widely recognized as one of the Southwest's most respected and talented architects. His work represents some of the most positive and influential directions in American architecture today. The recipient of numerous local, national, and international design commendations, he is responsible for all functional and aesthetic design elements of the project. Eddie focuses his experience as a design professional on establishing methodologies, setting design direction, and reviewing projects for quality assurance.

RICK JOY, Architect, was educated at the University of Maine in Music Performance from 1976 to 1978, the Portland School of Art from 1982 to 1984, and the University of Arizona in Architecture from 1985 to 1990 graduating Cum Laude. From 1976 to 1985 Mr. Joy enjoyed a broad range of experiences in Maine working as a general builder, a finish carpenter/cabinetmaker, and as an accomplished blues and jazz drummer. From 1985 to 1990 he held various courses at the University of Arizona. "As a contemporary modernist he expresses the nature of materials, but he also puts the mass back into the volumes that the original Modernist had removed some eight decades before. The architect is a pragmatist and not a theorist-- or rather, he bases his theory on pragmatics, developing his esthetics and approach to construction through a sensitive use of materials." Recent experience includes: Visiting Professor, Harvard University, 2000; Lecturer, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2000; The Home And Garden Channel “Dream Houses,” Personal Profile, 2000; Lecturer, University of Virginia, 2000; "The Works", traveling Lecture/Exhibit, 1999-2000; Continuously involved with the University of Arizona and Arizona State University as a visiting critic for student reviews and seminars.

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L. HUNTER LOVINS, Esq., is the president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, Inc. and co-creator of the Natural Capitalism concept. In 1982 she co-founded RMI with Amory Lovins, and proceeded to lead that organization as its CEO for Strategy until 2002. Under her leadership, RMI grew into an internationally recognized research center, widely celebrated for its innovative thinking in energy and resource issues. By the time she left, the institute had grown to a staff of 50 people and a $7 million annual budget, half of it earned through programmatic enterprise.

In 2001, Hunter was named one of four people from North America to serve as a delegate to the United Nations Prep Conference for Europe and North America for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. She is also a Commissioner in the State of the World Forum's Commission on Globalization, co-chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev, Jane Goodall, Jose Ramos-Horta, Vandana Shiva, George Soros and others.

Lovins has co-authored nine books and dozens of papers, and was featured in the award-winning film, Lovins on the Soft Path. Her latest book, Natural Capitalism, co-authored with Amory Lovins and business author Paul Hawken, was released in September 1999. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was the subject of a Harvard Business Review summary. Recent articles by her have appeared in World Link, World Business Academy Review, American Prospect, and Los Angeles Times.

Trained as a lawyer (JD, Loyola University School of Law, Los Angeles), Lovins has managed international non-profits, created several corporations, and is in great demand as a speaker and consultant. Her areas of interest and expertise include Natural Capitalism, globalization, governance, land management, energy, water, green real-estate development, and community economic development. She has taught at dozens of universities, including an engagement as the Henry R. Luce Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College. She is currently Professor of Sustainability at Presidio World College in the first accredited MBA program in Sustainable Management.

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SANDRA MENDLER, AIA, is an architect and a nationally recognized leader in the field of Sustainable Design. Sandra is a Vice President and Director of Sustainable Design for the San Francisco office of HOK. As a senior designer with twenty years of professional experience, she has led the sustainable design effort for a variety of project types including office buildings, museums, research laboratories and interiors. Clients include the EPA, Smithsonian, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, National Wildlife Federation, as well as many private sector corporations. Sandra is the chair for the national Committee on the Environment (COTE) for the American Institute of Architects. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of the US Green Building Council, and currently serves on the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System “V3” committee, developing the next version of that rating system which will be released in 2003. Sandra has been recognized by the Construction Specifiers Institute’s (CSI) national Environmental Sensitivity Award in 1998 and the International Interior Design Association’s (IIDA) national Sustainable Design Leadership award in 2001. Since 1992, Sandra has been integrally involved in the development and implementation of the HOK Sustainable Design program. This program was recently recognized by Global Green’s international “Creating a Safe and Secure World” Award. Sandra is co-author of the HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design, which was published by John Wiley & Sons last summer, and her work is widely published in print and on the internet. She has served on numerous expert panels, and has been invited to speak at dozens of conferences and industry events.

GLENN MURCUTT was born in London in 1936. He grew up in the Morobe district of New Guinea, where he developed a preference for simple, primitive architecture. His father introduced him to the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau, both of which influenced his architectural style. Murcutt studied architecture at the University of New South Wales from 1956 to 1961. During this same period, he worked with a series of architects. After graduating, Murcutt traveled for two years, returning in 1964 to work in the office of Ancher, Mortlock, Murray and Woolley. He remained with this firm for five years before he established his own practice in Sydney, Australia in 1970. In an initial exploratory phase Murcutt established a mastery of the Miesian style. His second phase was more regional in nature. Using a mixture of pragmatism and lyricism, Murcutt creates simple houses that resemble open verandas. He is chiefly admired among his contemporaries for creating an identifiably Australian idiom in domestic architecture. He is internationally known for environmentally sensitive modernist houses that respond to their climate and surroundings in the vast Australian landscape. He is the recipient of the 2002 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

DAVID W. ORR was born in Des Moines, Iowa and was raised in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. He holds a B.A. from Westminster College (1965), a M.A. from Michigan State University (1966), and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania (1973). He and his wife have two sons and one grandson. David Orr is currently Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College.

He is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education and his recent work in ecological design. He raised funds for and spearheaded the effort to design and build a $7.4 million Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College, a building described by the New York Times as "the most remarkable" of a new generation of college buildings. He was awarded a National Conservation Achievement Award by the National Wildlife Federation in 1993, a Lyndhurst Prize in 1992 awarded by the Lyndhurst Foundation "to recognize the educational, cultural, and charitable activities of particular individuals of exceptional talent, character, and moral vision," and the Benton Box Award from Clemson University for his work in Environmental Education (1995). He holds three Honorary Doctorates and has been a distinguished scholar in residence at Ball State University (1995) and Westminster College in Salt Lake City (1996). In a special citation, the Connecticut General Assembly noted Orr's "vision, dedication, and personal passion" in promoting the principles of sustainability. The Cleveland Plain Dealer (1/1/00) described him as "one of those who will shape our lives."

David Orr is the author of three books: The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2001); Earth in Mind (Island, 1994); Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992) and co-editor of The Global Predicament (North Carolina, 1979) and The Campus and Environmental Responsibility (Jossey-Bass, 1992). He has published 120 articles in scientific journals, social science publications, and popular magazines.

Dr. Orr is contributing editor of Conservation Biology. He is a Trustee of the Educational Foundation of America and the Compton Foundation. He serves on the Boards of the Rocky Mountain Institute (CO), Second Nature (MA), the Center for Ecoliteracy (CA), and the Center for Respect of Life and Environment. He is also an advisor and consultant to the Trust for Public Land, the National Parks Advisory Committee, the Ecosa Institute and other organizations. He is a frequent lecturer at Schumacher College (UK) and has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

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ANTOINE PREDOCK, an acknowledged master of environmentally sensitive design, Antoine Predock has won numerous awards including the AIA National Honor Award. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The New York Times among many others. There are over forty books published internationally featuring Predock’s works ROADCUT. “Critical to the spirit in my work is the enigmatic quality of the desert. You think you've got it, you think you understand; then you turn over a rock or crawl under a larger rock and you discover other worlds, other realms within. In a highway roadcut, for example, a sectional diagram of the earth is revealed through man's intervention. At the bottom of a roadcut in the southwest is pre-Cambrian granite, overlaid by limestone. In geologic time, other sedimentary strata like sandstone and ocean bottom fossils begin to turn up-- brachiopods, crinoids stems. Then you begin to see cultural artifacts, in relative scale, just a fraction of an inch compared to the miles of depth of the geologic datum. Prehistoric traces become visible, and then the successive cultural strata. In the Southwest, after Anasazi traces, are later cultures: the arrival of the conquistadors, 1930s hubcaps, beer cans, McDonald's wrappers, and the residue of future technologies or whatever else you might imagine out there-- the completion of the roadcut involves a sense of time beyond, that which is unknown but almost palpable here in the Southwest. The roadcut is a poetic diagram of an investigative process for the making of architecture. Lessons learned in the American Southwest apply anywhere in the world.”

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PAOLO SOLERI was born in Turin, Italy on June 21, 1919, and was awarded his Ph.D. with highest honors in architecture from the Torino Polytechnico in 1946. He came to the United States in 1947 and spent a year-and-a-half in fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and at Taliesin East in Wisconsin. During this time, Soleri gained international recognition for a bridge design displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and published in The Architecture of Bridges by Elizabeth Mock. He returned to Italy in 1950 where he was commissioned to build a large ceramics, "Ceramica Artistica Solimene." The processes he became familiar with in the ceramics industry led to his award-winning designs of ceramic and bronze windbells and siltcast architectural structures. For over 30 years, the proceeds from the windbells have provided funds for construction to test his theoretical work. In 1956 he settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his late wife, Colly, and their two daughters. Dr. and Mrs. Soleri made a life-long commitment to research and experimentation in urban planning, establishing the Cosanti Foundation, a not-for-profit educational foundation. The Foundation's major project is Arcosanti, a prototype town for 7,000 people designed by Soleri, under construction since 1970. Located at Cordes Junction, in central Arizona, the project is based on Soleri's concept of "Arcology," architecture coherent with ecology. Arcology advocates cities designed to maximize the interaction and accessibility associated with an urban environment; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment. He has written six books and numerous essays and monographs. When he is not traveling on the international lecture circuit, Soleri divides his time between Cosanti, the original site for his research located in Scottsdale, and Arcosanti.

MICHAEL SORKIN is the principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City, a design practice devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales with a special interest in the city. Recent projects include masterplanning in Hamburg and Schwerin, Germany, planning for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, campus planning at the University of Chicago, and studies of the Manhattan waterfront and Arverne, Queens. The studio is the recipient of a variety of awards, including three I.D. Awards and a Progressive Architecture Award.

Sorkin is the Director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York. From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Previously, Sorkin has been professor at numerous schools of architecture including Cooper Union (for ten years), Columbia, Yale (holding both Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard, Cornell (Gensler Chair), Nebraska (Hyde Chair), Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Minnesota.

He lectures widely and is the author of many articles in a wide range of both professional and general publications and is currently contributing editor at Architectural Record and Metropolis. For ten years, he was the architecture critic of The Village Voice. His books include Variations on A Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, Local Code, Giving Ground (edited with Joan Copjec),Wiggle (a monograph of the studio's work), Some Assembly Required, Other Plans, The Next Jerusalem, and After The Trade Center (edited with Sharon Zukin). Forthcoming are Weed, AZ and Work On The City.

Michael Sorkin was born in Washington, D.C. and received his architectural training at Harvard and MIT.

BILL AND ATHENA STEEN are world-recognized natural building experts in all manner of materials —straw, earth, lime, bamboo, thatch, and leichtlehm. They are the authors or numerous books on the subject, including the seminal “The Straw Bale House,” as well as “Built By Hand,” “Small Strawbale,” “The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes” and “Earthen Floors.” Both are master natural finish creators, including all manner of wall finishes, and in particular, earthen floors. Athena is also a master at building “cob” earthen ovens, using a uniquely adapted African oven shape. Bill was one of the originators of the straw-bale building revival in the late 1980s, in conjunction with Pliny Fisk, Matts Myhrman, Steve MacDonald and David Bainbridge. Currently, they have a non-profit building and teaching organization named The Canelo Project, and do a great deal of work in northern Mexico with those of modest means, including a major ongoing effort with Save The Children/Sonora, for whom they did an amazing all-natural materials office building. Through this work they have developed a unique “light-clay-straw block,” a kind of cross between an adobe block and a straw bale. To learn more about their work see their website, www.caneloproject.com.

DR. JOHN TODD was trained in agriculture, parasitology, and tropical medicine, and received his doctorate in fisheries and oceanography. He was an Assistant Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution until 1973, and in 1969 co-founded the New Alchemy Institute to create a science and practice based upon ecological precepts. In 1984 he began developing technologies for treating wastes and purifying water now known as the Living Machine. He is currently President of Ocean Arks International, and Research Director of Living Technologies.

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SIM VAN DER RYN is the president of Van der Ryn Architects, a renowned leader in sustainable architecture. For over thirty-five years, his design, planning, teaching and public leadership has advanced the viability, acceptance and knowledge base of ecological principles and practices in architecture and planning. His vision, passion and keen insight into the opportunities and challenges of every project, in concert with his collaborative skills, have made ecological design a real solution for our times. Sim also founded the Farallones Institute, whose work continues today at the Ecological Design Institute (EDI), Van der Ryn Architects' non-profit partner. Sim has also written several cutting edge books about sustainable planning and design including Sustainable Communities (1986) with Peter Calthorpe and Ecological Design (1996) with Stuart Cowan. For his leadership and innovation, Sim has won numerous honors and awards.

MATHIS WACKERNAGEL directs the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress, an Oakland-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute. He has worked on sustainability issues for organizations in France, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Switzerland, and the United States, and has lectured for community groups, government branches, NGOs, and academic audiences at more than eighty universities in over twenty countries. He has authored or contributed to over two dozen academic articles and co-authored various books on sustainability that focus on the question of embracing limits and developing indicators to assess sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth and Sharing Nature's Interest. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. There he developed, under Professor William Rees, the "Ecological Footprint" concept as his doctoral dissertation, now a widely used measure of sustainability. Mathis also directs the Centre for Sustainability Studies at Anáhuac University of Xalapa, Mexico.

JAMES WINES is the founder and president of SITE, an internationally known architecture and environmental arts organization chartered in New York City in 1970. He is the former Chair of Environmental Design at Parsons School of Design and recently became Head of the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. He has given lectures at more than 1800 colleges, universities, and professional conferences in twenty-four countries, and has contributed many essays to books and magazines in the USA, Europe, and Asia. In 1987 his book DE-ARCHITECTURE was published by Rizzoli International and, during the past decade, there have been twenty-three monographic books and museum catalogues produced on Mr. Wines' projects for SITE and their related models and drawings. He has designed and built more than 150 architecture, landscape, interior, and exhibition projects for both private and municipal clients. Winner of twenty-five major art and design awards, including the 1995 Chrysler Award for Design Innovation, he is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Kress Foundation, The American Academy in Rome, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Graham Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and The Pulitzer Prize Organization. James Wines lives and works in New York City, exhibits with the Max Protetch Gallery, and frequently travels abroad for projects and lectures. Among James Wines' current architectural projects, he is working on a master-planning of a sculpture park in Maryland, a memorial garden pavilion and a master-planning of a sculpture garden in Briosco, Italy, furniture for Saporiti Italia in Milano, Italy, and research for a prototype water and civilization museum for several cities in the U.S.A.

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