After John Enright’s introduction, David Hertz notes that this talk is occurring forty years after he graduated from SCI-Arc. He glosses “resilience imperative” as the necessity to “overhaul of our entire infrastructrure” given the current “age of unforeseeable disruption in an extreme climate future”.

He provides an overview his childhood, SCI-Arc in the 1970s, decisive encounters with Ray Kappe, John Lautner, Frank Gehry and others. He describes how his work in furniture led to the development of Syndecrete, a cement-based composite, and the incorporation of Syndesis Inc. in 1983.

Hertz discusses several projects, including:
•Beggs residence, Reno (1981)
•Venable studio, Venice (1989)
•Stradella Road house, Bel Air (1994)
•“Californication” house, Phase 1 (1995) / Phase 2 (2006)
•Tilt-up slab house, Venice (1999)
•Floating house, Venice (2000)
•House on Horizon Hill, Yachats, Oregon (2001)
•Panel house, Venice (2003)
•Split house, Venice (2005)
•Bay residence, Brentwood (2006)
•Mesa Road house, Santa Monica (2006)
•Olympic office, Santa Monica (2007)
•Addition & restoration to a Buff & Hensman Case Study house, Beverly Hills (2008)
•Thacher school dormitory, Ojai (2008)
•Mullin Museum, Oxnard (2010)
•Indies Trader Beran Resort (designed 2010)
•Marine animal rescue facility (designed 2011)
•Hermosa house, Hermosa Beach (2012)
•Navy and Pacific house, Venice (2012)
•Kelly Slater wave parks (designed 2012)
•Butterfly house, Venice (2013)
•747 Wing house, Malibu (2013)
•Bergamot Arts Center (designed 2014)
•World Surfing League trophy (2015)
•Space X launch control tower (designed 2015)
•Xanabu, Malibu (2017)
•Hollywood Bowl house, Venice (2019)
•Sail house, Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (2020)
•The Venice Place project (In process)
•NRDC office, Santa Monica (In process)
•Heal the Bay aquarium, Santa Monica (In process)
•Wall of Water, Venice (2016)
•Winning system for the Water Abundance X-Prize challenge (2018), leading to the founding of Skysource, promoting small scale, distributed, point-of-use solution to water, energy and cold storage

Hertz concludes by challenging the future architects in the audience “to design with resilience in mind like your lives depend on it, because they just might.”