The chairman of HOK’s, Bill Valentine, has attacked the profession for favouring celebrity over sustainability in their approach to design.

Mr Valentine claimed architects were more interested in appearing on the cover of magazines than truly embracing green design, following on from the starchitect phenomena which has gained currency in recent times.

The comments follow a speech last month by RMJM chief executive Peter Morrison in which he argued that the cult of the “starchitect” was diminishing the role of architects in the construction industry.

Valentine, who is speaking at a major sustainability event next month, said: “I don’t think architects are responding that well to this agenda. I still think they are overwhelmingly striving to be different — to be on the cover of magazines.”

He also also questioned the need to build tall, claiming it was fundamentally unsustainable. “There was a recent competition in San Francisco [the Transbay tower won by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects late last year] to build a 70 plus storey tower,” he said.

“The question was never asked why? The facts are that to build a tower in order to provide for a an 80sq m dwelling… takes six times as much steel as in a low-rise building.”

But Llewellyn Davies Yeang’s Ken Yeang said the real problem in the profession was one of education, not of ego. He said: “Most architects were brought up in the sixties, seventies and eighties, when sustainability was not a factor. Schools now have it on their agenda. It’s not a vanity thing, it’s a question of education and knowledge.”

He also insisted tall buildings could be sustainable as long as they were built near transport hubs.Architect and sustainability expert Bill Dunster also disagreed with Valentine’s analysis.

“There is a naive approach that somehow low-carbon design restricts architectural freedom of expression,” he said.

Source: Building Design