Eric Corey Freed is an architect, lecturer, and writer based in San Francisco, California, with 15 years of experience in green building. He is a practitioner in the tradition of organic architecture, first developed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Eric is founder and principal of organicARCHITECT, part architecture firm, part think tank. In addition to designing award-winning green buildings, the firm publishes its research and produces the annual organicAWARDS to recognize designs that are both innovative and environmentally responsible.
During Eric's early years working in his hometown of Philadelphia and in New York City, noted architect and critic Philip Johnson cited Eric as "one of the real brains of his generation." After several years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working with natural building materials, he moved to San Francisco in 1997 to join the heart of the green building movement.
In 2002, he was Founding Chair of Architecture for the San Francisco Design Museum, the exhibits of which were featured in Metropolis, ARTNews, and Newsweek. In 2005, San Francisco magazine named Eric the city’s "Best Green Architect."
Eric teaches in the Sustainable Design program he co-developed at the Academy of Art University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is on the boards of Architects, Designers & Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), Natural World Museum, Green Home Guide, and West Coast Green, as well as the advisory boards of nearly a dozen other organizations.
A much sought-after lecturer, Eric speaks extensively around the United States, giving nearly 50 talks a year, and consults directly to large companies seeking to transition into sustainability.
His monthly column, Ask the Green Architect, is published by GreenerBuildings and syndicated to dozens of other publications. He is a regular columnist for LUXE Magazine and his work has been featured in Dwell, Natural Home, Newsweek, and Town & Country, among others.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international agency that promotes the use of sustainably harvested wood, which is wood gathered from well-managed forests.
Not all wood is created equal. Although structural lumber is stamped to indicate the quality and strength, you can’t determine whether a forest was clear-cut in order to get the wood. The FSC was created in 1993 to provide an independent certification for just this reason. The FSC stamp is a guarantee that the wood came from a sustainably managed forest.
The FSC is an independent, not-for-profit, nongovernment organization. The FSC sets standards that reflect agreed-upon principles for responsible forest management and accredits organizations that certify the achievement of those standards by specific forests or woodlands. These certifiers track each company and their supply chains back to FSC-certified sources. This chain of custody certification assures that consumers can trust the FSC seal (see Green Certification Programs).
The term chain of custody refers to the path taken by raw materials harvested from an FSC-certified source through processing, manufacturing, and distribution until it is a final product ready for sale to the consumer. In the case of a house, this includes framing lumber, trim, or plywood. Any product made of wood is now available from an FSC-certified source.
The FSC has developed the following list of the Ten Principles of Forest Stewardship to address the issues and impacts surrounding forest management:
Principle #1: Compliance with Laws and FSC Principles: Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur, and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory, and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria.
Principle #2: Tenure and Use Rights and Responsibilities: Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented, and legally established.
Principle #3: Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use, and manage their lands, territories, and resources shall be recognized and respected.
Principle #4: Community Relations and Workers’ Rights: Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long-term social and economic well being of forest workers and local communities.
Principle #5: Benefits from the Forest: Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest’s multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits.
Principle #6: Environmental Impact: Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils, and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest.
Principle #7: Management Plan: A management plan — appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations — shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long-term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated.
Principle #8: Monitoring and Assessment: Monitoring shall be conducted — appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management — to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain of custody, management activities, and their social and environmental impacts.
Principle #9: Maintenance of High Conservation Value Forests: Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests. Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach.
Principle #10: Plantations: Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1–9, and Principle 10 and its Criteria. While plantations can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world’s needs for forest products, they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests.
For more information on the Forest Stewardship Council, go to http://www.fsc.org.
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