William McDonough Quotes & Sayings

I think as designers we realize design is a signal of intention, but it also has to occur within a world and we have to understand that world in order to imbue our designs with inherent intelligence. — William McDonough

You need that same creative force that exists in a building like Disney [Walt Disney Concert Hall] to actually tackle that most prosaic of problems. — William McDonough

The problem carbon is that everyone thinks we have an energy problem, we don't. We have plenty of energy. We have a carbon problem. Carbon is a material, so we have a material problem, not an energy problem. — William McDonough

I think the job of an original designer is to inspire. — William McDonough

Our concept of eco-effectiveness means working on the right things - on the right products and services and systems - instead of making the wrong things less bad. Once you are doing the right things, then doing them "right," with the help of efficiency among other tools, makes perfect sense. — William McDonough

In planetary terms, we're all downstream. — William McDonough

Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless! — William McDonough

Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,' — William McDonough

We have carbon in the atmosphere. That is a material in the wrong place problem. It's just like what I said about the lead. Lead in the biosphere is not good. Carbon in the atmosphere (over natural levels) is a problem. — William McDonough

I can't imagine something being beautiful at this point in history if it's destroying the planet or causing children to get sick. How can anything be beautiful if it's not ecologically intelligent at this point? — William McDonough

I see that idea that we need a new form as something critical. I mean, we do need to invent and not be benchmarking all the time. That's important to me. — William McDonough

The eco-effective future of industry is a world of abundance that celebrates the use and consumption of products and materials that are, in effect, nutritious - as safe, effective, and delightful as a cherry tree. — William McDonough

You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence. — William McDonough

It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works. — William McDonough

Ultimately a regulation is a signal of design failure ... it is what we call a license to harm: a permit issued by a government to an industry so that it may dispense sickness, destruction, and death at an "acceptable" rate. — William McDonough

So when you see a regulation against lead, because lead is a bad in a regulators mind, what does that mean? You are not telling us what is good, you are just tell us what you don't want, not what you do want. — William McDonough

Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they are designed for - a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" - a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality. — William McDonough

In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?' — William McDonough

How do we love all the children of all species for all time? — William McDonough

This idea that things are designed to go back to nature or industry for ever which is our articulation of these two metabolisms are actually a discovery not an invention. — William McDonough

We achieved our mission to the moon. Let's look home from that lofty perch and reimagine our mission on Earth - that is what we need to do here. Together, we can upcycle everything. The world will be better for our positive visions and actions. — William McDonough

If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage. — William McDonough

Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place — William McDonough

Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions. — William McDonough

Honor commerce as the engine of change. — William McDonough

Peter Drucker has pointed out that it is a manager's job to "do things right." It is an executive's job to make sure "the right things" get done. Even the most rigorous eco-efficient business paradigm does not challenge basic practices and methods: a shoe, building, factory, car, or shampoo can remain fundamentally ill-designed even as the materials and processes involved in its manufacture become more "efficient." — William McDonough

We are proposing buildings that, like trees, are net energy exporters, produce more energy than they consume, accrue and store solar energy, and purify their own waste, water and release it slowly in a purer form. — William McDonough

If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever. — William McDonough

I am very focused on large-scale deployments of renewable power and how we're going to get this done. Imagine our military bases covered with solar thermal collectors that could generate steam and electricity. — William McDonough

We prefer to talk about 100% renewable instead of zero carbon. When you say zero carbon, you are not positively defined. — William McDonough

Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good. — William McDonough

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it? — William McDonough

Carbon in your body - that's good thing. In a tree, it's good. In the atmosphere, it's a bad. Nature wants to sequester carbon in biota. And when we burn it, we release it. It's the wrong system. — William McDonough

Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle. — William McDonough

If you continue to act like an artist as you get older, you'll increasingly feel pressure. People will question your actions. — William McDonough

Imagine walking into a grocery there is a jar sitting there with a lid on it saying it's not carbon. That is ridiculous. It's an empty jar. — William McDonough

We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem — William McDonough

To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things-products, packaging, and systems-from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist. — William McDonough

Design is the first signal of human intention. — William McDonough

Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point. — William McDonough

The surest way to heal an eco-system is to connect it to more of itself. — William McDonough

If you don't like carbon, if you want to be zero carbon, then you might as well shoot yourself, dry up and blow away because you are carbon. — William McDonough

All these corporate reports say they want zero carbon. Well that is ridiculous, because you are not telling us what you are, you are telling us what you are not. — William McDonough

We get jealous not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us. — William McDonough

The problem I have with carbon as a bad thing issue, is that people go out and say they want to be zero carbon. You see it everywhere. — William McDonough

Not everything needs to be recycled. — William McDonough

The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal. — William McDonough

If you don't have an end game of something delightful, you're just moving chess pieces around. — William McDonough

I suggest we take our heads out of the tar sands and look up to see the sun. We don't own it, but it provides us all with great, endless value. So, too, the wind. These free, renewable sources of 'energy currency' are perfect partners to what we own together. — William McDonough

Modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, I didn't intend to cause global warning, it's not part of my plan, then we realize it's part of our defacto plan because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan. — William McDonough

Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power. — William McDonough

We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament? — William McDonough

We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away. — William McDonough

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live. — William McDonough

We are all born artists ... Almost everything kids do is art. — William McDonough

Art is about going a little nuts ... Kids do art for fun. It's playing. — William McDonough

I am working right at both the levels- with the most wealthy clients in the world, but also the poorest. I spend half my time designing for people that have nothing. — William McDonough