🌐 The Architects Who Don’t Wait For Permission

The Future of Architecture Is Now

Most architecture firms take a client’s request and design a building to fit. CannonDesign is not most firms.

When it received a request for proposal (RFP) from an Illinois utility that wanted a gleaming new headquarters, the team took a different approach.

Why design a new building at all? They asked. The utility had a plan to decarbonize by 2050 and was already decommissioning its coal plants.

Why not take one of those old coal plants and turn it into your new headquarters?

The utility loved the idea, withdrew the RFP, and began a process to align its physical footprint with its zero-carbon objectives.

Will a new RFP show up? Maybe. Either way, CannonDesign is satisfied because the company—a 100-year-old juggernaut and one of the largest firms in North America—is advancing a world where humanity flourishes.

That’s not just eye-roll copy for their website. It’s a mandate, a mission, and an approach to architecture that the firm calls Living-Centered Design.

An Industry That Doesn’t Control Its Destiny

Talk to the world's most prominent architecture and construction firms, and they’ll tell you the same thing: they want to build sustainably. They want every project to push the boundaries of net-zero energy design.

So what’s stopping them? Clients.

It’s not up to them, they say. They’re just delivering what the client asks for. And clients aren’t demanding cutting-edge sustainability.

I’ve had this conversation many times. Before launching Supercool, I was the founding CEO of Plantd, a manufacturer of carbon-negative building materials made from fast-growing grass—designed to replace wood products like plywood and OSB.

For us, the market fit was clear. D.R. Horton, the largest homebuilder in the U.S., simply saw a better product and bought ten million panels—enough for 90,000 homes—last fall. 

In commercial construction, though, the path to sustainable building is rarely straightforward. So, forward-leaning architecture and construction firms court sustainably minded clients and wait for more regulations to force the market forward.

But CannonDesign doesn’t wait.

The Architecture Firm Charting A New Approach

When Brad Lukanic became CEO of CannonDesign in 2016, he knew the firm had to evolve. Architecture could no longer be just about designing beautiful, functional spaces. The world was changing too fast.

To stay relevant and lead, the firm had to evolve into an innovation company. Engaging with clients meant using design to solve big, systemic challenges—health, education, workplace performance, and climate resilience.

That shift became Living-Centered Design—an approach to creating spaces that actively improve life.

• Hospitals that help patients heal faster and welcome the community.

• Schools that sharpen student focus, raise test scores, and inspire the next generation.

• Workplaces that make employees healthier and more productive so companies attain new heights.

This philosophy sets CannonDesign apart. Instead of starting with what needs to be built, they start with what needs to be solved.

Yet, for a firm in transformation, Lukanic and his executive team knew that sustainability was still a weakness. They didn’t just want to catch up to the industry; they wanted to leapfrog it.

To do it, in 2019, they brought in Eric Corey Freed.

The Sustainable Architecture Disruptor

How do we make net-zero energy buildings the norm?

Eric Corey Freed has been working on the answer for decades. As he told Time Magazine last fall, “What we have now is almost the exact opposite of what we need.”

Instead of buildings that waste energy and ignore human well-being, Eric envisions a future in which the more we build, the better off we are.

He’s been at the forefront for so long that San Francisco Magazine named him Best Green Architect two decades ago—in 2005. He literally wrote Green Building for Dummies. While the rest of us were doomscrolling during COVID, Eric used his downtime to write Circular Economy for Dummies, making a crucial economic concept more accessible to the world.

For years, major architecture firms courted him. And for years, he walked away frustrated. Sustainability was often a box to check or a PR play tucked under marketing—never embedded in business strategy.

CannonDesign proposed something altogether new, but Eric was skeptical.

“I said, look, I've been down this road before with large firms. It's always an argument about utilization rates and how billable I'm going to be. And to do this right, you need somebody who's going to engage the entire firm in a change management process.”

They were open to it.

“I need to be able to touch everything.”

Yes.

“I need to be able to report to the core team and the CEO.”

That’s what we have in mind.

“I am only happy if I'm having positive impact in the world. To me, it's not about money. It's not about fame. I need to know that I'm having impact.”

We work with 19 out of 20 of the best hospitals in the world and 4 out of 5 top cancer centers. You can have as much impact as you want.

Eric signed on. His mission? Don’t just make CannonDesign better at sustainability—make it the world’s best.

Five years later, the results speak for themselves.

Metropolis Magazine named CannonDesign 2024 Planet Positive Firm of the Year.

Time Magazine featured them as “The Design Firm Making Net-Zero Buildings a Reality.”

The Mindset Shifts That Make Green Building the Rule, Not the Exception

Eric didn’t just bring sustainability to CannonDesign; he brought a new way of thinking to scale impact.

His involvement with three of green building’s most ambitious movements—Living Product Challenge, EcoDistricts, and the XPRIZE for Healthy and Safe Homes— opened his eyes to new approaches.

It boils down to three mindset shifts:

1. From Scarcity to Abundance

Most firms see sustainability in terms of limitations—what can’t be done. The budget is too small. The client is resisting. The site is poorly oriented.  But that misses the opportunity to ask, What can we do?

• Why demolish when you can transform? Instead of constructing a new headquarters for an Illinois utility, CannonDesign proposed repurposing one of its decommissioned coal plants. This would reduce waste, preserve embodied carbon, and transform the utility's power-generation history into a low-carbon, 21st-century workplace.

• Designing for health, not just compliance. In healthcare, sustainability isn’t just about energy savings—it’s about patient recovery. CannonDesign integrates air quality improvements, daylight optimization, and non-toxic materials into hospitals, creating environments that help people heal faster.

2. Stop Waiting to Be Asked

Most firms wait for clients to request sustainability. CannonDesign integrates it from the start.

• Every design includes energy modeling, embodied carbon tracking, and healthier materials, whether the client requests it or not.

• This isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about creating better spaces that people actually want to be in.

3. Sell the Benefits, Not the Features

People don’t buy “sustainability.” They buy durability, more productive workplaces, better business outcomes, and cost savings.

• Cancer centers—Eric doesn’t pitch the world’s foremost clinics on green materials. He asks clients, “Why are we putting cancer-causing chemicals in hospitals for cancer patients?” 

• Workplaces—Employees don’t get sluggish because of lunch; they get sluggish because of CO2 buildup in poorly ventilated buildings. CannonDesign integrates smart ventilation that detects CO2 spikes and floods spaces with fresh air, improving focus, productivity, and well-being.

CannonDesign isn’t waiting for new regulations or industry mandates to make sustainability the standard. They’re building that future now—on every project, with every client, in ways that make green building smarter, more practical, and more profitable than business as usual.

Because the best way to change an industry isn’t to talk about what should happen. It’s to prove what’s possible.

Eric Corey Freed joins the Supercool podcast to discuss how CannonDesign is making high-performance, low-carbon buildings the norm without waiting for permission.

Listen to this podcast episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Number of the Week: 36,562

That’s the total number of architects working at the Top 100 largest firms in the world (725 work at CannonDesign). It’s a strikingly small number, given the global importance of the industry and the expectation that the world will build the equivalent of a new New York City every month for the next 35 years to keep up with population growth, according to Bill Gates.

Quote of the Week:

“Imagine buildings that can create more energy than they consume, process their own waste, and avoid all known cancer-causing chemicals in such a way that they support biodiversity and local ecosystems. It’s possible. We just have to be open to new ideas.”

— Eric Corey Freed, Director of Sustainability at Cannon Design, introducing the company’s Planet 2100 project to share its knowledge and approach to sustainable design.

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