Do Frank Gehry's comments on green architecture reveal a wider lack of knowledge?

Frank Gehry's Dancing House, Prague. Photo by RyanGWU82.

Renowned architect Frank Gehry caused a a bit of a stir last month during a speaking engagement in Chicago. Asked about the role of green architecture and buildings in tackling climate change, he said: "I think the issue is a political one."

He went on to criticise LEED, the US's rating system for the environmental impact of buildings, for rewarding "bogus stuff", and added that the costs of green buildings are "enormous", and that "they don't pay back in your lifetime."

Treehugger has an interesting report on the response from architecture writer Fred Bernstein, who defends Gehry's criticism of LEED, writing in ArchNewsNow:

One example is CityCenter, the Las Vegas complex that contains more than 5,000 hotel rooms, plus casinos and shopping malls and restaurants and nightclubs - altogether, 18 million air-conditioned square feet smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I can't imagine a greater environmental disaster than this complex (which, in addition to requiring vast resources to build and operate, is designed to draw travelers from around the world). And yet it was awarded LEED Gold status.

What I found most interesting was Gehry's claim that the costs of green building are "enormous" - this is patently untrue. Construct Ireland has published numerous articles over the years that prove green buildings - or at least buildings that are quite green - can be built at little extra cost (see this project for example). Consider the mixed-use complex in Foxrock we featured  in the March issue of the magazine, which will be online shortly. It's built to an almost-passive energy standard and makes abundant use of green materials, but Seamus O'Loughlin of contractors Viking House told us his price was the same as that offered by conventional builders - who were planning to build to the 2005 energy standards - who also bid for the project.

Gehry has designed some of the most iconic buildings of our times, but I think his comments are reflective of a wider lack of understating among many architects when it comes to green building and architecture. Of course some have been building green properly for a long time, but many have only started to talk about sustainability as the term has become trendy in the last five years or so. While some have genuinely made the effort to educate themselves, others haven't and just throw the lingo around. I've spent hours browsing architects' websites looking for potential case studies for Construct Ireland, and though many talk a lot about sustainability and energy, when you get to the details they usually reveal a lack of in-depth knowledge about what green building really is. In fairness to Gehry, at least he isn't pretending to be green when he isn't.