Peter Calthorpe
Discusses New Urbanism and Designing Cities for the Future
Peter Calthorpe has been named one of 25 “innovators on the cutting edge” by Newsweek Magazine for his work redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America. Throughout his long and honored career in urban design, planning, and architecture, he has been a pioneer of innovative approaches to urban revitalization, suburban growth, and regional planning.
His latest book, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, published in 2011, documents new work and analysis relating patterns of development to energy and carbon consumption, along with other environmental, social and economic impacts. Recently he led a groundbreaking state-wide urban design effort, Vision California, to inform the implementation of the state’s Climate Change legislation.
Since forming Calthorpe Associates in 1983, his work expanded to include major projects in urban, new town, and suburban settings within the United States and abroad. Internationally his work in Europe, Asia and the Middle East has demonstrated that community design with a focus on environmental sustainability and human scale can be adapted throughout the globe.
http://www.calthorpe.com/
Geoff Lawton
Discusses Permaculture, Ecological Engineering Modeled on Nature
Geoff Lawton is a permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. Since 1995 he has specialized in permaculture education, design, implementation, system establishment, administration and community development. In 1996 he was accredited with the Permaculture Community Services Award by the permaculture movement for services in Australia and around the world.
Lawton’s aim is to establish self-replicating educational demonstration sites. He has currently educated over 6,000 students in permaculture worldwide. Lawton’s ‘master plan’ is to see aid projects being replicated as fast as possible to help ameliorate the growing food and water crisis.
http://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-on-youtube/
Brock Dolman
Discusses Watershed City 2.0: Re-thinking and Retrofitting for Resilience
Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and Permaculture Design Program, Brock co-directs its Wildlands Biodiversity Program, co-instructs Basins of Relations and permaculture-related courses, and co-manages the Center’s biodiversity collection, orchards and 70 acres of wildlands. Living up to his specialized generalist nature, and rekindling the dwindling art of the peripatetic natural historian, his experience ranges from the study of wildlife biology, native California botany and watershed ecology, to the practice of habitat restoration, education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy activism towards societal transformation.
http://www.oaec.org/
Craig Scott
Discusses Bio-Architecture and a San Francisco of the Future
Craig Scott is co-founder of IwamotoScott Architecture, committed to pursuing architecture as a form of applied design research, via a design process that proceeds from the belief that each project can achieve a unique design synthesis. The practice engages in projects across a wide range of scope and scale, including theoretical design proposals, museum installations and exhibitions, full-scale fabrications, competitions and commissioned building projects. Conceptual themes of the work focus on intensifying the experiential and performance based qualities of architecture. This design approach is informed by ideas of formal, spatial and material adaptation with respect to conditions of program, site and environment, and is pursued through in-depth exploration of the fluid and transformative potentials of new technologies.
http://www.iwamotoscott.com/
Jeff Stein
Discusses Arcology, Sustainable Hyperstructures Where Dense Populations Thrive
Award-winning architect, writer, educator Jeff Stein AIA is president of Cosanti Foundation. His first construction workshop at Arcosanti was in 1975. Since then he has spent time on the Cosanti staff; taught architecture in the Career Discovery program of the Harvard GSD; headed the department of architecture at Wentworth Institute in Boston; and was Dean of the Boston Architectural College for the past seven years. He has taught at architecture schools in the US and at the Technicum Winterthur, Zurich, and Ecole d’Architecture Languedoc-Rousillon, in Montpellier, France. Mr. Stein has written for ARCHITECTURE BOSTON magazine and was for ten years architecture critic for the New England newspaper, BANKER+TRADESMAN. He lectures widely about Arcosanti, energy and urban design, including at the recent Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Conference on Urban Sustainability, this past fall in Montreal at the 9th World EcoCities Congress and this spring at the Santa Fe Institute. Jeff Stein’s work is to set a tone for Arcosanti’s continued development. Parallel to that, the work is to move ahead with the continued discussion of the idea of Arcology – architecture and ecology – at the highest levels nationally and internationally. Jeff lives at Arcosanti, but travels about one week each month, speaking publicly, and pursuing friends and funding opportunities for Arcosanti. He is also establishing partnerships with institutions and governmental bodies to help foster Arcosanti’s growth as a resource for education and development.
http://www.arcosanti.org/
Thomas Reed
Discusses Unity Shoppe, a "Free Store" Helping Families from Going Homeless
Tom is Executive Director of The Unity Shoppe – a central distribution facility for over 300 other non-profit agencies, churches, schools and hospitals. Low-income children, families, seniors and the disabled are referred by other charities for food, clothing, school supplies, household needs-and basic necessities. This collaboration among the charities allows the Unity Shoppe to eliminate duplicate giving to the same families so more people can be helped with better and more consistent services.
http://www.unityshoppe.org/
Robert Calef
Discusses Damanhur Temples of Humankind, an Advanced Model for Intentional Communities
Robert Calef has been a student of various eco-villages and sustainable living experiments for over 20 years. He is the founder of Rainbow Body Cultural Center and has been developing reality TV shows of these communities as a means to explore answers to the complex problems of the world. He is currently completing a documentary on the Damanhur Temples of Humankind in northern Italy called “The Heart Inside of a Mountain” examining the systems and societal structures in this model intentional community. Damanhur was created as a Laboratory for the Future of Humanity and Robert has been invited to capture a rare perspective on the community's inner workings and share their learnings with the world.
http://opensecretbookstore.blogspot.com/
Marc Sigler
Discusses Monolithic Dome Home, the Future of Disaster-Proof Dwellings
In 1995, after Hurricanes Erin and Opal severely damaged their home, Mark & Valerie Sigler began researching building techniques that would alleviate such extensive devastation. What he discovered was the Monolithic Dome. Withstanding 300+ mph winds, storm surges, termites, rising energy costs, fires, and even earthquakes, airformed concrete domes are almost indestructible. In September of 2004 Pensacola Beach, Florida was deserted due to evacuation orders, but the Siglers had permission to stay because of their Monolithic Dome home. The Siglers weren’t alone. They served as gracious hosts to NBC News reporters on the day prior to the storm as they set up cameras in and outside the dome. Reporters stayed through the night broadcasting live as often as possible. Before the eye approached, Pensacola reporters clenched railings on the front porch while reporting to America and gauging wind speeds as often as possible. At one point during the night, after recording a 65-mile an hour wind speed and practically yelling to be heard over the fierce wind, one reporter chose to go inside the dome to visit with Mark. It was obvious upon entering the dome that it was not only quiet and strong, but provided a safe haven from the storm.
http://www.monolithic.com/stories/feature-home-doah
Katia Sol
Discusses Leadership 2.0 - Cultivating Regenerative and Transformative Models of Leadership for our Future
Katia Sol has spent the last 18 years facilitating leadership, community development, and transformative educational programs in more than 30 countries and with several First Nations around the world. An award-winning scholar and writer, she led the development of Ghost River Rediscovery's International Youth Leadership Program and is a current design partner for Emergent Performance Consulting. She has also facilitated numerous cross-cultural and intergenerational dialogue circles and events, including a gathering of diverse Bay Area leaders in the fall of 2012, together with Belvie Rooks and Penny Livingston-Stark.
Katia's PhD study on leading models of transformative education brought her into collaboration with the Ecology of Leadership program at the Regenerative Design Institute, an innovative leadership development program founded and directed by Christopher Kuntzsch and James Stark, which she now also co-facilitates. She is passionate about seeding new models of transformative leadership that are based upon principles of cooperation, regeneration, and remembering our inherent connections with ourselves, one another, and the natural world. Her newest project is working toward the launch of a Bay Area based Institute for Transformative Global Leadership.
http://katiasol.com
James Hanusa
Action Pitch Session Host
James Hanusa is CEO of Urban Innovation Exchange an innovation ecosystem development company. He is the former Green Economy Advisor to the Stakeholder Forum, organizer of the Rio+20 Earth Summit and a Fellow of Global Urban Development. His work on New Initiatives for the Burning Man Project is focused on the Economic Development and Civic Participation in San Francisco.
James’s background encompasses teaching social media at Ex’pression College and urban sustainability organizing for
350.org, Global Campaign for Climate Action and others. He founded Change SF in 2009, a San Francisco-based citizen sustainability initiative. His previous professional experience includes roles in business development and strategic alliances for information technology and social media companies including Intel, SAP, PeopleSoft, and Garrigan Lyman. He holds an M.B.A. in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and a B.S. in Marketing from Arizona State University.
http://www.uixglobal.com
