Often, I long for your comments though they never come. In response to my post below on the Stranger’s not so pleasant coverage of Seattle City Hall, I got more than I bargained for from Anne Whitacre.

Whitacre is a senior associate at Gehry Partners in Los Angeles, though she spent 30 years working in Seattle at firms like ZGF and NBBJ. She’s a full-time specifier there and deals with products, both green and not green, on a daily basis.

Whitacre isn’t against green buildings or green products as a whole… rather her qualm is how a product’s ”greenness” often trumps whether it actually is a good product.

Among her comments in her very informative letter to me, she said, “I simply do not understand the bally-hooing of LEED buildings. From a design professional’s perspective, there are “good” buildings and there are “bad” buildings, and the procuring of a LEED rating does not automatically turn a “bad” building into a “good” one.”

I called her up and she told me when she worked in Seattle, a state building wanted non-VOC paint on its walls, but the paint was a bad product and chipped when people leaned against it. Six months later the walls had to be totally repainted.

Then there’s the company that uses an animal-based adhesives on roofs. Only problem? Your building smells like a pig when it’s hot outside.

Or water based adhesives. In her letter, she said, “the water based adhesives are so susceptible to mold infestation that they started causing more infection control issues than their lack of fumes “solved.” I know of two health care agencies that have switched back to solvent based adhesives, because the fumes are temporary but mold sticks around forever.”

And she’s got even more examples. To read them more about Whitacre’s perspective, click here.

It’s not that she’s anti-green, she says, but rather she’s anti-bad, untested product.

Oftentimes, people don’t see the product and only see the green label, she said. “(With some) young designers, they’ll see the green thing and won’t look at anything else. I think that’s a problem.”

I know a lot of you don’t want to hear this. But I do. Please share with me your experiences of green products, both good and bad. You can comment below (anonymously or otherwise), you can e-mail me at Katiez@djc.com, or you can call. Whatever you feel comfortable with.

To read Whitacre’s full letter, see Monday’s edition of the DJC.

Tags: Gehry Partners, Greenwashing, LEED, Los Angeles, materials, Problems, products, Seattle

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Green materials, LEED, Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.