By Tom Braford
Forty years ago, graduate students at UC Berkeley School of Architecture were inspired to actually build their dreams for a better world by their beloved young renegade professor, Sim Van der Ryn, who some years later would come to be known to the world as ‘the intrepid pioneer of the eco frontier’.
The students put Sim’s ideas to the test and retrofitted a small house in the Berkeley Flats, which became a Hippie Mecca in the seventies called the ‘Integral Urban House’. The incredibly popular book by the same name was only slightly less popular than his earlier publication, The Toilet Papers.
Forty years later at 82, a resurgent Sim and his partner Eden Clearbrook took St Louis by ecological and sociological storm during their recent whirlwind visit.
Together they have inspired new generations of intrepid pioneers of the eco frontier to go where few designers and community builders here have gone. Sim’s latest book, Design for an Empathetic World, invites us to reconnect with each other, ourselves and nature.
So, it is back to the basics at the Ecovillage as we set out once again to test out all of the integral elements of an Irresistible Ecovillage Solutions Community at the scale of an EcoHogan in the sky, an ecological, 5-frequency tiny house that extends as far into the Earth as into the sky and connects with people, nature and community at all levels.
Essentially, it is a learning-by-doing opportunity that will impact how we build the whole Ecovillage and the Network of urban and rural ecovillages that will follow.
Join us for play days as we excavate, elevate and integrate the creation of community together from the ground up and the sky down and all the way around.
Each play day will start with one of Sim’s incredible handmade and heartfelt slide presentations, interactive collective learning exercises, some aspect of communal meditative activity and fabrication of the future now, initially in the form of an EcoHogan with all its elements and regenerative systems.
Check our website for details.
www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com
braford@sbcglobal.net