Connection
Sustainability for people An interview with Eric Corey Freed On February 5th, architect and Connection contributor Chris Fagan spoke with Eric Corey Freed, a renowned expert in sustainable design who is making a powerful impact on our future built environment. Their conversation ranged from advising design firms to Frank Lloyd Wright and standup comedy. Eric Corey Freed is an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker. As Senior Vice President of Sustainability for CannonDesign, he leads the healthcare, education, and commercial teams toward better and higher performing buildings for over 15 million square feet a year. For two decades, he was the founding principal of organicARCHITECT, a visionary design leader in biophilic and regenerative design. Eric is the author of 12 books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies.” In 2012, he was named one of the “25 Best Green Architecture Firms” in the US, and one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.” In 2017, he was named one of Build’s American Architecture Top 25. He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council.
CF: Eric, thanks for taking the time to speak with me! Can you please introduce yourself? ECF: My name is Eric Corey Freed, I’m an architect and director of sustainable design at Cannon Design, and I live in beautiful Portland, Oregon. CF: Can you describe your role at Cannon Design? What does your role look like on a typical day? ECF: What is a firm but people? I’ve been friends with the Cannon Design team for years and was looking for a way to have a greater impact. I had owned a firm for 20 years, it was fun but…small. I have this one life and career to give; how can I do as much good as possible? There are plenty of problems in the world, but I choose to deal with this big one called climate. Cannon approached me looking for someone to facilitate this new role. And I had some requirements. Sustainability has to report directly to the CEO and core team. Not marketing. I want the freedom to make bold suggestions about where we as a firm need to go. I get to be involved in every project team at the firm, 20 million square feet built each year across North America and the world. I often brag that I have the best job at the firm!
54
Today, I did a sustainability workshop for a team designing a new children’s hospital. I’m selling them on the benefits that sustainability brings, including health and stress reduction. We focus on these desirable outcomes and find sustainable ways to get there. At Cannon, I found a ton of enthusiasm, but also a ton of reluctance to bring up sustainability ideas because they didn’t feel they were experts. Have you heard of “3 questions deep”? CF: Please elaborate. ECF: Most of us can answer one question about any topic. If you read an article, you might nail a follow-up question. But the 2nd follow-up reveals who has firsthand knowledge of a subject. I’m training our teams to be “3 questions deep” on embodied carbon, mass timber, net-zero energy, Passivhaus, and so on, if only to instill the confidence in them to speak up. I’m trying to change the culture of the entire firm. CF: What phases of each project are you usually engaged in, or is it a holistic involvement? ECF: I join the upfront phase, writing proposals, doing the kickoff, then handing off development to the experts. I want to bake these outcomes in at the start! You can’t take a drawing set through CDs and tack on sustainability; I make sure it’s integral to the design so it can’t be value-engineered out. I’m also in many ways the voice of reason. In
