Sim Van der Ryn

Sim Van der Ryn is an American architect. He is also a researcher and educator. Van der Ryn's driving professional interest has been applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design.

Van der Ryn has promoted sustainable design at the community scale and the building-specific scale. He has designed everything from single-family and multi-family housing, to community facilities, retreat centers and resorts, to learning facilities, as well as office and commercial buildings.

Van der Ryn's family left the Netherlands during World War II, settling in Kew Gardens, Queens, then eventually Great Neck, New York. Sim grew up with a sense of closeness with nature and a fascination with its details. He got his training in architecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and obtained state architecture licenses and national architectural certification.

Van der Ryn was appointed California State Architect in the administration of Governor Jerry Brown in the late 1970s, during which time he developed the United States' first government-initiated energy efficient office building program and led adoption of energy standards and disability access standards for all construction in California.

In the 1970s Van der Ryn founded the Farallones Institute which helped to create national awareness of "ecologically integrated living design." The Farallones Institute designed, built and managed an urban and a rural research/teaching center for studying appropriate technologies, energy-efficiency, organic agriculture, land restoration, community design and ecologically sustainable energy and waste systems, design and construction. The urban center was called the Integral Urban House. Van der Ryn later founded the Ecological Design Institute (EDI), Van der Ryn Architects' non-profit partner, which carries on this work.

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