Bill McDonough Wants to Redesign the Way We Do Everything

Bill McDonough, Al Gore and excited delegates.

Bill McDonough stands with Al Gore as they are surrounded by Summit participants.
Photo by TE Lesle

by Timothy Lesle
Visionary Solutions Session
Bill McDonough, Summit Master Speaker

Architect and designer Bill McDonough continues to defy convention. In the picture at left, he is standing with Al Gore at the Sierra Summit. Nine years ago, Gore presented him with the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. Yet, McDonough maintains, the very idea of sustainability needs to be questioned. As an example, he recounted being asked by a reporter why he didn't like the term "sustainable." McDonough asked the reporter to describe his relationship with his wife. The reporter said, "Sustainable." McDonough paused, then replied, "I'm sorry."

Today, McDonough touched on many aspects of living on earth--suggesting that recognizing these things and consciously integrating them is necessary to continuing to live on earth. For example, he described the threats to democracy from monied interests: “$3.5 billion of registered lobbying money is chasing 565 people [in Washington.] How can we have a democracy?”

Conversely, he believes “regulation is a signal of design failure.” And because of that, we must design new ways of doing things. “Nowhere in the Bill of Rights,” he notes, “is anyone given the right to pollute.”

So McDonough is working to change our goal from being low-impact to no-impact. By working only with non-toxic materials that are truly efficient--that is, they are not “less bad” than the alternatives--he stresses the idea of a technical metabolism, where manufactured materials degrade into the soil or are directly re-used, much as nutrients or water are cycled through natural systems. What better design example is there than nature? Using a tree as an example, he asked the audience to visualize designing something that creates oxygen, fixes nitrogen and carbon dioxide, gives water, provides food, changes color with the seasons, creates microclimates, and self replicates.

His ideas have won over the heads of a trillion dollars worth of companies, as well as the government of China. All while reminding everyone that this should be fun: “I think Jefferson inserting the pursuit of happiness [into the Declaration of Independence] was very cool.”

When I interviewed McDonough for the Planet in May, he was on his way to France to look at new kinds of bricks. Why? China has banned traditional bricks because at the rate they must be manufactured for housing, it will run out of coal. Faced with alarming possibilities like that, China has made McDonough's “cradle to cradle” philosophy its national design policy. If the largest country on earth has adopted his principles, maybe we will, too. And one day we'll realize that McDonough didn't just defy convention, he redefined it.

-- 09/09/2005 Fri
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