Salon has a story about greenwashed monster houses:

The American proclivity for living large does more than raise questions about whether a 4,000-square-foot single family home should ever qualify as a “green” residence. It also calls into question one of the fundamental tenets of sustainability — that market demand for green products and technologies will save us from environmental apocalypse. If we all go solar, if we install rainwater catchment systems and use sustainably harvested lumber, so the logic goes, then there’s no need to deprive ourselves of the luxuries that space — and the furniture and accessories to fill it — affords. But the issue of consumption, not to mention overconsumption, is curiously absent from the sustainability discourse. And in an era characterized by unprecedented consumer wealth, this could be the movement’s fatal flaw.

Author Linda Baker even addresses McDonough’s “eco-effective” argument and the cherry-tree metaphor. Well, sure, but until we do have a broad range of materials which have zero or net-positive environmental impact, improving efficiency and reducing consumption will still be important strategies for managing environmental impacts. In the meantime, what green designers should be doing to improve their eco-effectiveness is to follow the dictums of books like “The Not So Big House”: help their clients understand that bigger or more is not always better, and that thoughtful design solutions can help them do more with less.

In a cheeky quote, architect George Ostrow, principal of Seattle’s Velocipede Architects, compares the “green” McMansion to the hybrid SUV: greenwashed contradictions, odd expressions of a society raised to believe that hyperconsumption will solve all ills. Overconsumption causing environmental problems? Well, the solution is the same: buy some more stuff!

Interestingly, the article concludes with a look at modern modular housing, which for now is mostly wishful thinking but seems poised to take off.