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?

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.