2005 Western Conference

Keynote Presentations

Tedd Benson
Timber Framing: A Key to the Past or Bridge to the Future?

The revival of timber framing in North America is now into its third decade. What started with a few individuals in the Northeast has grown to include thousands of people and hundreds of companies throughout North America. While rooted in age-old values and techniques, this success story is really built on out-of-the-box thinking that has lead to impressively unique building system innovations. If timber framing is to remain vibrant for another 30 years, we must continue to look backwards but think forwards.

Tedd Benson is considered by many to be the single individual most responsible for this revival. Besides being an author and occasional guest on This Old House, his Benson Woodworking and Bensonwood Homes companies in New Hampshire have earned world-wide respect through sensitive and sensible management, design, construction and employment practices. Don't miss Tedd's take on where we, as a Guild and an industry, have been and are going.

Sim Van der Ryn
Design For Life

Our global crisis is also a design crisis as civilization shifts from design processes and products formed in the image of the machine to designs based on the intricately ordered web of life. Here Sim lays out the characteristics of the emerging Integral Society and Integral Design. Sim's 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.

Trained as an architect with a degree from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; licenses from California and New Mexico; and certification from the National Council of Architectural Registration, the theme of Sim's career in design, teaching and research has been applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design.

Throughout his professional life, Sim has pioneered sustainable design at the community scale and the building specific scale. He has designed single family and multi-family housing; community facilities; retreat, resort and health centers; schools and learning facilities; office buildings; commercial buildings; and planned communities. In each project, he has pioneered new technologies, systems, materials and design solutions to create environments that are sensitive to place and climate, responsive to human needs and that place the highest regard on both the integrity of ecological systems and the quality of life.

David Eisenberg
The Big Picture - Moving Toward Sustainable Building and Development

In an entertaining and thought-provoking presentation, David Eisenberg, co-founder and Director of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT), explores the larger context for design, construction, development, and regulation. Ranging from the use of alternative building materials and appropriate technology to issues of national security and the health of our communities, this talk weaves together many crucial ideas, developing the foundation for a new set of criteria for all of our decision making processes.

This presentation will build on David's broad experience in building, including projects ranging from conventional wood frame, masonry, light and structural steel, and structural concrete to troubleshooting the spaceframe and glazing systems for Biosphere 2, to adobe, rammed earth, and straw bale construction. It will also incorporate the lessons learned in the nine years he has pursued the program he developed at DCAT, Building Sustainability into the Codes, which has led to his national column, "Building Codes for a Small Planet," in Building Safety Journal, the magazine of the International Code Council.

David Eisenberg has well over twenty years of construction experience and is an internationally recognized authority in the field of green building, He is a two-term member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council, serves on the Advisory Board of Environmental Building News, and is a member of the Tucson/Pima County Joint Building Code Committee. David is a co-author of The Straw Bale House Book.