By Alex Wilson August 26, 2012February 24, 2023 Alex Wilson/Fundamentals of Resilient Design/News & Blogs

Fundamentals of Resilient Design #3: Creating Smarter Buildings and Communities

As we look to create homes and communities that will keep us comfortable and safe in a world of climate change, terrorism, and other vulnerabilities, there are a handful of strategies that I group loosely under the heading of “smarter design.” Some of these strategies come into play more at

By Alex Wilson August 25, 2012December 26, 2023 Alex Wilson/Fundamentals of Resilient Design/News & Blogs

Fundamentals of Resilient Design #2: Designing Homes for More Intense Storms

Flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in Brandon, Vermont on September 12, 2011. Photo: Angela Drexel – Creative Commons license Anybody who was in Vermont one year ago this week and witnessed the raging floodwaters of Hurricane Irene and the havoc they wreaked, understands the vulnerabilities we face from intense

By Alex Wilson August 24, 2012February 24, 2023 Alex Wilson/Fundamentals of Resilient Design/News & Blogs

Fundamentals of Resilient Design #1: Making the Case

I thought a lot about resilience last year, during a six-week sabbatical bike ride through the Southwest. I covered a little over 1,900 miles, most of it over land that hadn’t seen a drop of rain since the previous fall; some of those areas—mostly in Texas—still hadn’t received significant precipitation months after my return home.

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.