David W. Orr | Oberlin College, USA

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College and Executive Director of the Oberlin Project. He is the recipient of seven Honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, and a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging "persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy."
He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has served as a Trustee for many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and the Bioneers.
His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. He is the author of seven books and co-editor of three others. His first book, Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992). A second book, Earth in Mind (1994/2004). Hope is an Imperative: The Essential David Orr (Island Press, 2010) is a collection of his writings from 1985 to 2010. In 1987 he organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement. In 1989 Orr organized the first ever conference on the effects of impending climate change on the banking industry, co-sponsored by then Governor Bill Clinton.
In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as "One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century," and by The New York Times as the most interesting of a new generation of college and university buildings. The Lewis Center purifies all of its wastewater and is the first college building in the U.S. powered entirely by sunlight. But most important it became a laboratory in sustainability that is training some of the nation's brightest and most dedicated students for careers in solving environmental problems. The story of that building is told in two books, The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002), and a second, Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006).
Recent projects include a two year $1.2 million collaborative project to define a 100 days climate action plan for the Obama administration (www.climateactionproject.com), and a project with prominent legal scholars across the U.S. to define the legal rights of posterity in cases where the actions of the present generation might deprive posterity of "life, liberty, and property."
He is presently the Executive Director of the Oberlin Project which is focused on making the City of Oberlin a model of full-spectrum sustainability and replicating that effort through a National Sustainable Communities Coalition.
David Orr was among the world experts featured in Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary "The 11th Hour" on Climate Change.

Read article by David Orr "What is Education for?" Click here

David Orr's lecture is titled: "Design for Resilience in a Black Swan World".

David Orr's lecture is made possible thanks to the cooperation and support of the US Embassy of Athens. The lecture takes place in cooperation with the Benaki Museum.

Hilde Sponheim | LPO Arkitekter, Norway

Hilde Sponheim is a partner at LPO Architects. With a master's degree in architecture from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology she is working mainly with urbanism and urban development issues and has experience from challenging tasks dealing with sustainability and environmental issues.

LPO is an Oslo-based architectural firm working in a wide range of architecture-related tasks, from large urban development projects and complex buildings, to advisory services and exhibition design. Through public organizations as Future Built and clients with high environmental ambitions, LPO have done projects as Papirbredden and Lierstranda in Drammen, and the Bellona house in Oslo. www.lpo.no

In her lecture, Hilde Sponheum, will speak about green architecture / sustainable urban planning, focusing on Norwegian conditions, possibilities and challenges in this region of Europe, sustainable urban development projects, relevant architectural projects, and will explain about Norwegian perspectives in the debate on sustainable and eco-friendly design and design processes.

Hilde Sponheim's lecture is made possible thanks to the cooperation and support of the Embassy of Norway.

Thomas Doxiadis | doxiadis+

Architecture and Landscape Architecture from Harvard, specializes in the site planning and integration of architecture and landscape design in a sustainable way. Teaches at Patras and Thessaly University.

www.doxiadisplus.com