Sim Van der Ryn, a visionary architect and an early pioneer of environmentally thoughtful design, died on Friday at a memory care facility in Petaluma. He was 89 years old.
Long before “sustainability” entered the mainstream lexicon and “green architecture” implied more than a coat of paint, Mr. Van der Ryn was espousing ideals of ecologically conscious built environments, utopian visions that cut against the grain of the world he had inherited.
As…