William McDonough likes to tell stories. Though he is an architect, it is his stories that first let you know he is about something fundamentally different; that he is about “reinventing” our man-made world as we know it.
William McDonough’s speeches often begin with a story about a journey on the cusp of a revolution that has changed our planet; that now threatens our planet. In 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson, left for Europe. His wife had just died and he sought escape in travel. He left Boston on a sailing ship. And he returned on a steamship.
“If we abstract this,” said McDonough, “he (Emerson) went over on a solar-powered recyclable vehicle operated by crafts persons, working in the open air, practicing ancient arts. He returned in a steel rust bucket, spilling oil on the water and smoke into the sky, operated by people in a black dungeon shoveling coal into the mouth of a boiler.”
What is progress, anyway?
McDonough believes humankind is still trapped in the boiler room of the First Industrial Revolution, overwhelming sustaining natural systems with brute power fueled by nonrenewable energy.
Our principle measure of progress, the Gross National Product -- the fabled GNP -- considers the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, progress.Consider it. All the economic indicators go up! More people are working. More money pumped into the local economy. But there is no measure of what has been lost, no measure of what McDonough calls “the legacy” of an action.
Alternatively, if a person fixes up a worn out farm -- pruning and cultivating the orchard, planting a riparian buffer to clean up the water, restoring fish to the stream, feeding the soil through organic crop production, encouraging song birds and trees to thrive -- this initiative wouldn’t show up on any traditional measuring of “economic progress.”
So how do we define progress? If the only tool we have is a hammer, every task before us looks like a nail. But this is not God given. We can intend to do something different. And design, says McDonough, is the first signal of human intention.
“If we understand that design leads to the manifestation of human intention,” said William McDonough speaking under the soaring stone arches and flying buttresses of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, “And if what we make with our hands is to be sacred and honor the earth that gives us life, then the things we make must not only rise from the ground but return to it, soil to soil, water to water, so everything that is received from the earth can be freely given back without causing harm to any living system. This is ecology. This is good design.”
Good design.
Above all, William McDonough is about good design. Until recently, he was Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, is founder of The Institute for Sustainable Design at UVA and is the head of two design firms based in that city.He revels in solving what he terms, “interesting design problems.” The challenge encompassed in that term interesting is to produce designs that “live within the laws of nature” -- that honor “all our children”, including those of other species.
According the United Nation’s 1972 Brundtland Commission report, “Sustainable development is the ability of present generations to meet their needs while allowing future generations to meet their own needs.” Honor all our children, including those not yet born.
Together with his partner Michael Braungart (in McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry), McDonough has come up with three fundamental principles for design that are necessary to be “sustaining.” These three principles are at the heart of what Atlantic Monthly called McDonough’s Second Industrial Revolution.
Waste equals food.
In the natural world, environmentalists know about organic recycling organized principally around composting. Nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements are returned to the soil.
McDonough and Braungart have applied this concept to the technical cycle of the industrial revolution, what they call our “technical metabolism”. Intention. No industrial production process will produce waste. To achieve this goal each product must be designed so that any waste produced is actually food (read material here) for another production cycle OR is so biodegradable that it can be returned to the soil.
Story. McDonough goes to a factory in Switzerland seeking to produce fabric for modular furniture that is “sustainable”. The plant manager confesses that his current fabric production is so toxic that the remnants are officially “hazardous waste” under Swiss law. (If the remnants are hazardous, what about the exposure people have to the product?) How to do it differently?
McDonough and Braungart meet with Ciba-Geigi, one of the largest chemical corporations in the world, and ask for a list of chemical products they make that are totally nontoxic. Out of 7,000 different products made by the Swiss chemical firm, only 37 are safe enough to be used in the new fabric. We’re pretty deep into that boiler room.
In the end, McDonough and Braungart design a non-toxic sustainable fabric that not only transform modular office products, but the fabric plant as well.
Workers who once worked wrapped in protective gear in fear of a toxic workplace, now stand in light and open air with no worries. The remnants can be composted and used in gardens. And the water that comes out of the plant is actually cleaner than the Swiss drinking water that enters it. So the water is recycled as well.
Waste equals food; a simple concept that has the power to transform industrial production.
Life within current solar income.
This second McDonough principle should be the energy policy of the United States. If it was, many other problems including global warming, acid rain, nitrogen air deposition would be solved.
For McDonough, the current extravagant use of stored solar income...i.e. fossil fuels ...is the essence of stealing from our children. The recent announcement by Ford that they were redesigning the SUV for get 40 or 50 miles a gallon reflects, in part, William Ford’s (CEO) growing relationship with McDonough.
Of course, in Maryland, we just passed an “electricity deregulation” law that speeds up the spending of our fossil fuel bank account -- with its accompanying massive environmental damage -- all in the name of very short term profit for a few energy wasting customers like Westvaco and Bethlehem Steel. So we are moving deeper into the black, toxic dungeon of the First Industrial Revolution instead of embracing the life giving, light filled, sustaining principles of the Second. Such a deal, such foresight, such leadership on our elected officials part.
Biodiversity.
In an industrial age that seeks to standardize all products, even living beings like pigs and chickens, McDonough dares to shout “biodiversity.”
“The characteristic that sustains this complex and efficient system of metabolism (natural metabolism andeven technical metabolism) and creation is biodiversity,” said McDonough. “What prevents living systems from running down and veering into chaos is a miraculously intricate and symbiotic relationship between millions of organisms, no two of which are alike.”
Jefferson’s Second Declaration.
McDonough traces the reflection of the importance of diversity -- biodiversity -- in the march of increasing rights that has characterized US history.“In 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act,” said McDonough. “For the first time, the right of other species and organisms to exist was recognized. We have essentially declared that Homo Sapiens are part of the web of life.”
And then returning to his University of Virginia roots, he continued, “Thus, if Thomas Jefferson were with us today, he would be calling for a Declaration of Interdependence which recognizes this.”
“We must face the fact that what we are seeing across the world today is war, a war against life itself. “
William McDonough’s systems thinking and design value system offer us a path to a sustaining future with abundance. For more information visit his website at:
www.mcdonough.com