At the Summit:
> Home
> Schedule

Coverage:
> See all reports
> Gallery
> Random!
> Video

 

Eco-architect Bill McDonough speaks at the Sierra Summit.
Photo by Tim Lesle

by Marilyn Berlin Snell
Visionary Solutions Session

Bill McDonough, visionary architect, designer, and eco-innovator, is a cool dude. Dressed in black from head to foot, McDonough was the first master speaker at the Sierra Summit Friday and he didn't mince words. Noting that his home in Charlottesville, Virginia was built by Thomas Jefferson, he said that, as in Jefferson's time, a revolution is required. "We need freedom from remote tyranny," he said, referring to the fact that one generation tends to tyrannize the next through lack of vision, poor planning, and pollution. To make his point, he pulled showed us a picture of a little yellow duckie. Cute though it is, it also has a warning label on it that the plastic can cause cancer and reproductive harm. "What kind of people are we," he asked, "that we would design like this?"

McDonough's mantra is design for "cradle to cradle"—a circular flow of use—rather than "cradle to grave"—a one-way ticket to the landfill or toxic dump. Design, he believes, is the first signal of human intention. "Do we intend to give each other endocrine disruption, cancer?" he wondered. The question that fascinates him these days is "how do we love all children of all species for all time?" He added: "You'd be amazed what happens to design when that question is asked," he said.

And we were amazed. McDonough has been hired by the Chinese government to design seven new cities. The nation has officially adopted McDonough's "cradle to cradle" philosophy as a national policy and is allowing him to work his magic across the land. In Liuzou, for instance, two million people will live in solar powered homes, where gray water is recycled and purified for domestic use, and where each and every structure has a green roof of seedum. McDonough says that before any work on design begins in Liuzou, his team will study the sun and wind, the water courses, so that they can work in harmony with and harness nature.

Yet building entire cities isn't the only gig McDonough has. He's also just helped design a new textile, the safest in the world. His team looked at 8,000 chemicals and had to jettison 7,962 of them due to their toxic make up or effects. So, with the remaining 38, they made a fabric so clean that the water used during the manufacturing process is more pure at the end than at the beginning. The European consortium Airbus is using the fabric for its airplane seats. McDonough joked that in a pinch during air travel you can eat your chair.

-- 09/09/2005 Fri
12noon