Double Takes
Building for Life
Think about everything that goes into crafting a typical single-family home... Metal for the nails and screws, refined from raw ore pulled from the Earth. Sheet rock and concrete from quarries. Wood from manicured pine forests. Petroleum-based chemicals for the carpets and every shape of plastic.
That typical single-family home represents the sum of an enormous amount of labor and raw materials, plus the energy needed to shape those rough elements into finished products. Now take that single family home and super-size it into a factory, an office building or even a skyscraper...
The sheer volume of raw materials needed to create and then maintain traditionally designed buildings can be staggering. And more often than not, the finished building is at odds with its environment — air conditioners instead of natural ventilation, overhead lights instead of windows...
But that's changing. Architect and educator Bill McDonough is one of the leaders of a growing global movement to re-think each step of the process, from the source of the raw materials to the design of the final project. The goal is to bring people closer to a sustainable relationship with the Earth.
In the 1980s, McDonough designed the first "green" office building for the Environmental Defense Fund in New York. More recently, he completed a redesign of the River Rouge car factory for Ford, a hundred-acre industrial plant in Dearborn, Mich., which now has the world's largest "living roof" made of grass and plants that soak in the sun and rain, helping to mitigate the industrial pollution below.
In a June 12, 2004, interview on Weekend America, McDonough talked about his passion for design and how it relates to the health of the Earth itself.
"I'm not really that interested in sustainability," he said. "What's your relationship to your wife? If you say 'sustainable,' I'll say 'I'm sorry.' Just being sustainable doesn't necessarily mean we're being productive and prosperous, that the world becomes a better place. It simply maintains existing systems."
McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart are also the authors of Cradle to Cradle, a self-described "manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design."
At the heart of the book is the notion of the inherent intelligence of natural systems, like the nutrient cycle in forests and solar energy, and how understanding those systems — instead of shielding against them, as traditional design typically does — can inform the way we live and even industrial systems and regional planning.
McDonough, recognized as a global leader on sustainability issues and eco-friendly designs for everything from homes to entire cities, said the root principles of efficient, responsible design can be a catalyst for change for the whole human species:
"It's about design quality — How can I make a great design if it makes you sick or destroys the planet? I would rather design a life-support system for people who are celebrating their existence than a work-support system for people who don't have a life."
1 Comments
Vaughn Poller : | September 26, 2007 9:00 AM #
Over ten years ago Mr. McDonough lead a team to provide a study of my locality and give guidance on how it should develop. In the end the developer adopted the look but very little of the underlying principals, our loss. The lasting impact that Mr. McDonough had on me was his explanation that we exist in the mist of interlocking and overlapping systems. Our bodies are a collection of systems, with various subsets. Our communities are a collection of systems, as are our social constructs, and the environment we inhabit. We cannot successfully navigate this reality unless we understand the processes that occur within these systems and equally important how these systems inter relate to on another, for they are all connected. When we impose barriers in an effort to isolate one system from another we are likely inflicting harm. We have the tools and intellect necessary to observe and understand the functions of most or all of the systems we are impacted by and if we adapt our actions so they complement the systems, we achieve the greatest benefit. I don’t think it’s easy to follow the principal established by this philosophy, but it’s the lens I’ve viewed the world through ever since.