by kevin, on November 12th, 2009
Alumillenium
Unfortunately, Greenbuild day two started with a terrible education session. It was entitled Thinking Big: Green Buildings on Every Street and co-presented by Eric Corey Freed and Lucia Athens. I’ve seen Eric lecture at other events and usually have a high opinion of his shows, but this one was totally off target. His half of the talk covered three issues – suburbia, Detroit, and Dallas. But in none of these topics did he mention strategies for getting green buildings on every street. The section on suburbia was a random smattering of statistics and funny images, the section on Detroit was part history lesson part discussion of urban farms, and the section on Dallas was a not so subtle promotion for his non profit consulting organization. Although his graphics are usually compelling, it was clear that he had pulled slides from other presentations. I give more than twenty lectures each year and I know this has to be done. You can’t create a totally unique show for every event, but you purge any remnants or traces of those previous shows. That was not the case here. It was clear that slides were borrowed from other venues and it gave the appearance he was phoning it in. Lucia Athens’ contribution was a full on pitch for her book. Overall, a huge disappointment.
Coverings ETC
Enviroglas
Luckily, I shifted gears and did a number of good interviews with Alumillenium, Coverings ETC, Kirei, Squak Mountain Stone, and Enviroglas. Alumillenium was a new find, I was unfamiliar with their product. It’s a Mexican company that manufactures beautiful aluminum and brass tiles made from recycled content. Currently they’re only available in the US through Ann Sacks, but we’re hopefully working out a way to source directly. We’ve used EcoGres by Coverings ETC in past projects, but according to our conversation with them today, that product now has a minimum order too large for most projects – 15,000 SQ. That’s too bad. I liked the product and clients have been happy with it. They have a number of new products made from recycled glass, ceramic, aluminum (from airplane fuselages), and plastic. We’ve also been using Kirei for years, but their product development pace makes a visit to their booth a requirement, and this year was no exception. Not only have they introduced some new products made with coconut and bamboo, but they were showing an experimental product made from hemp. We’re hoping to talk with the owner about doing a test project using that material. I’ll keep you posted on where it goes. Squak Mountain Stone makes a solid surface material from one hundred percent recycled paper. What’s really interesting about the product is the back story. The company was created as a result of a business school paper seeking ways to develop local businesses that can solve local waste production issues. Enviroglas is a terrazzo product similar to other competitors like IceStone or Vetrazzo. But they use other kinds of recycled material in their slabs which sets them apart. One product line uses reject crushed toilets from Kohler, and another uses reject glass balls from a margarita glass maker.
One interesting event I attended at lunch time was a press conference held by American Clay – the clay based wall covering manufacturer. After a year long series of tests, they’ve discovered that their product helps indoor spaces maintain temperature stability. Compared to regular paint, American Clay keeps a space cooler in warm weather and warmer in cool weather. The difference between clay and paint varies through the year, but clay can be as much as eleven percent more efficient. This kind of finding means that use of their product contributes to building energy efficiency. They don’t have a complete understanding of why this is the case, so they’ll be conducting additional testing for another year hoping to uncover more data. It’s an interesting phenomenon and one I’ll be watching.
I attended another terrible educational session in the afternoon. It was an experiment for the presenters that did not work. On stage was a moderator and on screen were four speakers linked through a web cast. If the technology problems they faced were the only issue, I think I could have forgiven them for making the effort. One of the speakers had a bad connection and was present for less than fifteen minutes. The sound for two other speakers cut in and out so much that I couldn’t understand a thing they said. But truly sad was the material they presented. It was supposed to be about how social media advances the conversation on sustainable design. But the dialogue never went deeper than Facebook is neat, Twitter is cool, and LinkedIn is for business people to link up. Really, is that all? I kept waiting for them to dive in, but they unfortunately kept the entire presentation very top line. All four participants were twenty something, recently graduated, architecture students (and one who dropped out of school to start a blog) with limited green design experience. It was hard to take anything they said seriously. And I know how old that makes me sound, but it was hard to see how they had any insight to offer.
Al Gore at Opening Plenary
Opening Celebration
Peter Gleik, one of the world’s experts on water, gave a fantastic talk about global water issues and their connection to energy. It was one of the highlights of the day. I also attended the opening ceremony with Al Gore and Sheryl Crow, but I’ll cover that in a follow up post.
Please return for day three coverage.
I think you may be getting too hung up on the title of the talk. I was in the audience and heard Eric say he changed out his talk at the last minute to what he was “currently obsessed with.” I thought his talk was incredible. I grew up in Michigan and had no idea about how bad Detroit was.
Although the Dallas piece was really just to tell the story about his nonprofit, I think that is ok given that it is: A) a nonprofit; and B) he showed the work of a lot of other people and firms. The model he showed is literally putting green buildings on every street, which was the title of the talk. He is a great speaker, and clearly has learned how to get things done. (Though I thought it weird he openly made fun of the early timeslot of the talk.)
I thought the same thing you did about Lucia Athens presentation, until I spoke with her after the talk. That manifesto she showed is NOT IN HER BOOK, but something new she has been working on. When I talked to both of them, Eric mentioned she originally had 14 points, not the 9 she had shown.
I know blogs are more opinion driven than journalistic, but I think you should have checked before making some serious allegations about the motives of both speakers.
I personally think that given the high level of green knowledge in the audience, speakers at GreenBuild can talk beyond the basic green building intro you wanted and get into such specifics and experiments worthy of talking to a group of their peers.
That iChat conference later in the day was so bad I walked out. You’re right, I would have liked to get more from the people from Inhabitat and Archinect.
Hi CJ,
Thanks for your comment. I really wish I had the positive view of the session you did. I will completely admit that my critique was mostly opinion, but that was the point of my Greenbuild posts – they were my view of Greenbuild activity. But I don’t think I was being unfair. In fact, I think I was rather generous. I have two primary issues with the session:
First, the section of Eric’s show about suburbia was entertaining and amusing, but totally random if not followed with suggestions for how to rectify the issues he raised. All of that information was interesting, but useful only if connected to the material about Detroit and Dallas, which it was not. Those two sections were essentially stand alone presentations about urban farms and reinventing a single block in Dallas. What’s the thread holding all three together? The material about Detroit was absolutely fascinating. I especially liked his idea of using vacant land to increase urban food production capacity with greenhouse growing. That’s a big idea. But New Orleans has also experienced population depletion, in a shorter time frame, and due to terribly unfortunate circumstances. It also has food deserts, but is doing far more with it’s green rebuilding programs. It’s a much better example of green buildings on every street as a solution to big issues in a city located on the front lines.
Second, I don’t think I’m being too sensitive about how the presentation didn’t match the session description. I deliver more than twenty shows a year and get bashed mercilessly in audience reviews if there’s even the slightest misinterpretation of session title or description. It’s also a critical issue for event organizers since the audience is paying good money to attend and don’t like being misled or potentially wasting time. The session description said they would talk about suburbia, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. My reason for attending was to hear about the later two. Both are great examples of cities rethinking the relationship between architecture and the environment. To ignore them and talk about Detroit and Dallas instead, Eric decided that our interests were subservient to his own personal concerns and current obsessions. That’s not a small issue. It shows disrespect for Greenbuild and the audience.
A non profit organization still generates revenue or receives funding even if doing good work or providing valuable service to the public. It’s reasonable to assume that as the executive director of Urban Re:Vision, Eric is not performing that role without salary. Yes he did show designs by other architects, but those were the work product of the competition his organization produced. Including slides about their mission and board of advisers does little to advance the discussion other than to suggest credibility through association – a marketing or promotion tactic. I think this section could have been amazing had he selected one of the winning projects and described it’s green features in detail, presented the attributes that made it a winning solution, and talked about how it could be a prototype for development on other sites in other cities. Showing a random collection of competition submissions teaches us nothing about green buildings or how they can be implemented on every street. Without showing us what was, or could be, learned from such a competition, his discussion of it and the organization are self promotion, not education.
As for Lucia, you are correct, the manifesto she presented is not from her book, but she started her section by talking about it. And she mentioned her book, and how the manifesto ideas connect to it, throughout her talk. Beyond that, she lost me with her terrible “stop building crap” bullet point. Who is she to be the arbiter of crappy design? I’ve seen many an ugly LEED certified building. A green building is not aesthetically pleasing inherently, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That section of her show lacked taste and useful content.
Again, thanks for the comment. I wish I could report a positive experience with that session. Maybe I was a bit grouchy at the first session of the conference, but I was expecting better and was terribly disappointed. Yeah, the iGreen session was a complete failure. What other sessions did you attend that you liked?
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