Mr. Freq: Interesting points. But at the end of the day the discussion lays in an ontological discussion. Because if we consider Architecture with a capital “A” to be product of experimentation like what the masters of the avant-garde have done, then we will consider the implications of the design process. If otherwise we consider architecture to be a 100% environment dependant discipline, we will be judging it in different ways. Now in another point, I believe the value of architecture could lie in the process, the ideas or the building. A perfect act of architecture includes all three. But that happens not so frequent, and also we cannot impose our way of seeing things to everybody. Now, in my view a sustainable building is not necessary architecture. And architecture is not necessarily sustainable.

Also, and at the risk of further muddying the waters, what would be the “optimal” performance? And who can really tell that there isn’t, in fact, an “optimal” solution that wasn’t reached and simply isn’t known? I believe with the upcoming “green grab” that will label every single project with cross – vent windows as “bioclimatic”, “sustainable” and “optimal”, we’ll run the risk as a profession of further debasing our credibility in a bad mixture of verbal (eco-)hyperbole, bold (untested) statements and irresponsible claims to fame forming a cacophony of vanity. Now adding to formal Archispeak, we have ArchiGreenSpeak like this quoted from the project description:

“We are also proposing green systems like geothermal and low consume artifacts to ensure a minimal environmental impact and energy consumption.”

So, all is well, then, yes! Amen!

you are seriously mistaken to make such a blanket statement.

while from a purely intellectual view this may be intuitively correct (à la “the form doesn’t matter, only what materials we build it with”), upon closer inspection of building culture constraints (cost & efficiency, material availability, context of building site etc.) the argument fails – take, for example, Ken Yeang’s argument that the skyscraper will never be sustainable in a deep-green mode of thinking, despite years of effort of many practices to greenwash them. Simply put, its scale is its ecological downfall – and scale is but one dimension of form.

What many here are criticizing is formalism, and seeing its effects in the work discussed.

Luigi Snozzi: “Every intervention requires destruction, destroy with reason!”
(Ogni intervento presuppone una distruzione, distruggi con senno.)