About RDI

The Resilient Design Institute

RDI is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing resilient design in our buildings and communities. The Resilient Design Institute is committed to advancing sustainability through a focus on resilience in our buildings and communities. Creating more energy- and resource-efficient buildings, redesigning communities to be less automobile-dependent, supporting local agriculture, and creating healthier ecosystems are strategies for both advancing sustainability and adapting to climate change. Resilient design encompasses a wide range of measures including building design, infrastructure design, land-use planning, farming practices, and forestry. Through initiatives in such areas, RDI seeks to create safer buildings and communities while leading us toward sustainability.

Our Mission

The Resilient Design Institute (RDI) creates solutions that enable buildings and communities to survive and thrive in the face of climate change, natural disasters and other disruptions.

Our Vision

Resilient design is globally accepted and implemented in every built environment as a path to a more sustainable world.

House Shell - Most of the window area is on the south side of the house. The windows on the north and west, shown here, are quite small. — *Photo: “The most resilient house in North America”*… Read More

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.