Interview with Eric Corey Freed of organicARCHITECT, Part I

We recently got to catch up with Eric Corey Freed, founder of organicARCHITECT. Freed was recently named "Best Green Architect" by San Francisco Magazine, and is currently working on his book, The Inevitable Architect: A Phase by Phase Guide to Green Architecture.

In today’s post, Part I of the interview, we discuss his inspirations and what it means to be green. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: Where did you receive your inspiration to become a green architect?

ECF: I knew I wanted to be an architect at the age of eight, when, after showing my father drawing after drawing of buildings, he joked about it. "What is an arkitek?" I would ask. I took an early interest in drawing nothing but buildings, especially houses.  Luckily, my father encouraged and supported this obsession.

When I was ten, I saw my first Frank Lloyd Wright building (Beth Shalom Synagogue in Philadelphia) and I realized that there was more to building than mere shelter.  It was the first building I could not conceive of on my own.  All of the other buildings were decorated boxes, but this was something different, something expressive, something triumphant.

By the time I was in university, I was in contact with former Wright apprentices.  By the time I graduated, I was working for them.  I am continuing this tradition of organic architecture by bringing green technologies into creative design.

As for being green, I did not really choose it.  It was not as if one day I woke up and said, "OK, I will build differently now."  To me, it was always a very logical way of building.  I never responded to the hippie argument that we should do it for the birds and bees.  Being green was always a logical argument.  The more I learned, the more sense it made.

People do not ask to live in a windowless, toxic gas chamber that wastes energy, but that is what they get.  Imagine a building that produces more energy than it uses, creates oxygen, supports health and does not consume our resources.  Doesn’t that make more sense?

Of course you would not put toxic chemicals into your building! Of course you would orient the building to the sun! Of course you let fresh air into the building! It would be stupid to do it any other way, right? Well, we must have an entire generation of stupid architects who have forgotten how to site a building and use materials correctly.

Q: What does it mean to be green? How does it differ from typical architecture?

ECF: I am an architect who designs odd looking buildings that also happen to be green.  After nearly 15 years of doing this, I am at the point where I no longer ASK my clients if we should be green or not.  There is no need to ask for permission to do the RIGHT thing!

All of the projects we do are green, whether the clients wants it or not.  I believe it is my professional responsibility to provide buildings that do not kill my clients or harm their environment.

So now I just put in these green features into the design.  In most cases they actually SAVE my client money or at least cost the same.  This frees me up to focus on designing something that expresses their needs.

To be green means to be responsible.  We take responsibility for the things we put into our buildings.  Buildings of the world consume 40% of our energy and materials.  Architects are the ones to blame for the environmental mess we are in.  We take responsibility by asking these questions for everything we use:

1.  Where did this material come from?
2.  What are the by-products of its manufacturer?
3.  How is the material delivered and installed?
4.  How is the material maintained & operated?
5.  How healthy are the materials?
6.  What do we do with them once we are done with these materials?

I have many friends who are green architects and they build nice, ordinary looking buildings that are green. I have many friends that are design focused architects and they build wild,
imaginative buildings, but ignore the environment.

No one seems to be making creative AND green buildings. I do not see anyone else out there stressing innovative design that also happens to have environmental responsibility.  This is the direction the profession needs to go in order to prove our value to the building industry.

In the (near) future, ALL buildings will be green.  This is inevitable.  Our goal is to help architects get to that point as quickly as possible.  Let’s all just be responsible and stop all of this debate.

Next week, in Part II of the interview, Freed will discuss his new book and early adopters of green architecture.

organicARCHITECT