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Tom Bender began to make his mark in the early 1970s as an architect, author, and strategic planner. He has since been also been visible as a writer in the emerging field of green economics. Recently he has studied and written about traditional architectural philosophies of Asia.
Tom Bender is considered to be one of the American founders of the "green architecture" and "sustainability" movements. His research, writing, and architectural design since the 1970s has embraced the relatively new field of solar architectural design. Bender was a professor of architecture in the University of Minnesota, and his Project Ouroboros in Minnesota in the early '70s was one of the first demonstrations of "resource-self-reliant houses."
Like Amory Lovins and some other modern analysts, Bender has subscribed to the reduction of energy usage (often through the decrease of on-site energy wastage) rather than a massive increase of centralized energy-production facilities in a society.
Tom Bender moved west to Oregon, where he served as an energy researcher for Governor Tom McCall during the so-called Arab Oil Crisis of the early 1970s. During that decade, Bender was also the co-editor of RAIN Magazine (a journal concerned with appropriate technology), and, among the theorists and practitioners of the "green" approach to planning and design, has been a popular essayist since that time.
In the 1970s, as well, Bender began to develop what he has termed the "Factor 10" principles. These are principles of design and planning that he asserted will achieve order-of-magnitude improvements in economic effectiveness and sustainability. These principles have received interest from governments of Austria, the Netherlands, and Norway, as well as endorsement by the European Union, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and UNEP.
Tom Bender has been the recipient of such awards as: the California Affordable Housing Award (1981); Sustainable Community Solutions international competition award (the American Institute of Architects & International Union of Architects, 1993); and the National Award for Sustainable Design (AIA Architecture and Energy Program, 2001) for his Bank of Astoria project in Manzanita, Oregon.
In recent years he has relocated to Australia.
Books:
Environmental Design Primer, 1973
Learning to Count What Really Counts: the Economics of Wholeness, 2002
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