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 “I believe we can accomplish great and profitable things within a new conceptual framework—one that values our legacy, honors diversity, and feeds ecosystems and societies . . . It is time for designs that are creative, abundant, prosperous, and intelligent from the start.”
William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable development. Trained as an architect, McDonough's interests and influence range widely, and he works at scales from the global to the molecular. Time magazine recognized him in 1999 as a "Hero for the Planet," stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that-in demonstrable and practical ways-is changing the design of the world." In 1996, McDonough received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the nation's highest environmental honor, and in 2003 he earned the first U.S. EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for his work with Shaw Industries, the carpet division of Berkshire Hathaway. In 2004, he received the National Design Award for exemplary achievement in the field of environmental design. McDonough is the architect of many of the recognized flagships of sustainable design, including the Ford Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan; the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College; and NASA's new "space station on Earth," Sustainability Base, completed in 2011.
He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He was commissioned in 1991 to write The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability as guidelines for the City of Hannover's EXPO 2000, still recognized two decades after publication as a touchstone of sustainable design. In 2002, McDonough and the German chemist Dr. Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which is widely acknowledged as a seminal text of the sustainability movement.
McDonough advises major enterprises including commercial and governmental leaders worldwide through McDonough Advisors. He also is active with William McDonough + Partners, his architecture practice with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia, and San Francisco, as well as McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, the Cradle to Cradle® consulting firm co-founded with Braungart. He has co-founded, with Braungart, not for profit organizations to allow public accessibility to Cradle to Cradle thinking. These include GreenBlue (2000), to convene industry groups around Cradle to Cradle issues, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (2009), founded at the invitation of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to create a global standard for the development of safe and healthy products. He and Braungart contributed the Cradle to Cradle certification program to the Institute. McDonough also co-founded Make It Right (2006) with Brad Pitt to bring affordable, Cradle to Cradle-inspired homes to the New Orleans Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.
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| Now in its fifth printing . . . |
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| By William McDonough & Michael Braungart |
| North Point Press, 2002 |
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 William McDonough's new book, written with his colleague, the German chemist Michael Braungart, is a manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. Through historical sketches on the roots of the industrial revolution; commentary on science, nature and society; descriptions of key design principles; and compelling examples of innovative products and business strategies already reshaping the marketplace, McDonough and Braungart make the case that an industrial system that "takes, makes and wastes" can become a creator of goods and services that generate ecological, social and economic value.
In addition to describing the hopeful, nature-inspired design principles that are making industry both prosperous and sustainable, the book itself is a physical symbol of the changes to come. It is printed on a synthetic 'paper,' made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, designed to look and feel like top quality paper while also being waterproof and rugged. And the book can be easily recycled in localities with systems to collect polypropylene, like that in yogurt containers. This 'treeless' book points the way toward the day when synthetic books, like many other products, can be used, recycled, and used again without losing any material quality—in cradle-to-cradle cycles.
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| A six-hour conversation with William McDonough |
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| 6 CD set |
| New Dimensions Radio |
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 The New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network presents "The Monticello Dialogues", a CD set containing six hours of host Michael Toms's interviews with William McDonough. In this extended set of discussions McDonough describes his vision for a cradle-to-cradle future and how it is beginning to come about.
To learn more or to purchase the CD set, visit the New Dimensions website.
"Anyone interested in the future of the planetary ecosystem and how it's possible to create sustainablity and abundance simultaneously need to listen to Bill McDonough. He is visioning outside the box and, indeed, is reinventing the box."
Michael Toms
Host, New Dimensions Radio
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| Documenting the work of William McDonough & Michael Braungart: |
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| Narrated by Susan Sarandon |
| Earthome Productions |
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| Table of Contents >> |
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| Something Lived, Something Dreamed: Urban Design and the American West |
| November 2004 |
| by William McDonough |
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| The award-winning Red Butte Press has unveiled a fine-press limited-edition publication, Something Lived, Something Dreamed: Urban Design and the American West. Reimagining the city through William McDonough’s visionary lens, the Press' handmade edition of this spirited manifesto features letterpress monoprints by Washington artist Christopher Stern. Examining the complex relationship between natural and urban landscapes in western American cities, Something Lived, Something Dreamed offers a lyrical invitation to reconsider the rich relationship between nature and city in the 21st century.
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| Learn more about the Red Butte Press edition. >> |
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| Buildings Like Trees, Cities Like Forests |
| in TechTV's Catalog of Tomorrow |
| September 2002 |
| by William McDonough and Michael Braungart |
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| “...when we survey the future -- the prospects for buildings and cities, settled and unsettled lands -- we see a new sensibility emerging, one in which inhabiting a place becomes mindful, delightful participation in landscape. This perspective is both rigorous and poetic. It is built on design principles inspired by nature's laws. It is enacted by immersing oneself in the life of a place to discover the most fitting and beautiful materials and forms. It is a design aesthetic that draws equally on the poetics of science and the poetics of space. We hope it is the design strategy of the future.” |
| Order this book from Amazon.com. |
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| A New Geography of Hope: Landscape, Design and the Renewal of Ecological Intelligence |
| in Extreme Landscapes: The Lure of Mountain Spaces, edited by Bernadette McDonald |
| September 2002 |
| by William McDonough and Michael Braungart |
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| “Perhaps a distant wilderness, an idea of wild country, positions nature too far from our daily lives....North Americans tend to think that true nature can only be found on the pristine, remote extremities of civilization and that these places have little to do with the everyday human world. Culture is here, nature far away. The trouble is not with protecting and preserving wilderness (why not many places like Yosemite?), it's that the design of the world we inhabit-our communities, our workplaces, our economy-is so impermeable to nature it is all too easy to leave our reverence in the parking lots of national parks.” |
| Buy this book from your local bookstore, order it locally through Booksense, or order it from Amazon.com. |
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| The Extravagant Gesture: Nature, Design, and the Renewal of Human Industry |
| in Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Juliet Schor and Betsy Taylor |
| November 2002 |
| by William McDonough and Michael Braungart |
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| “Though human industry in the past 150 years has resorted to brute force rather than elegant design, the making and trading of goods can still be a wellspring of creativity, productivity, and pleasure. Think of the thriving marketplaces that have enlivened the world's great cities, the cherished objects and materials that transform shelter into soulful dwelling. These need not be sacrificed to protect our forests, rivers, soil and air. Indeed, human industry and habitations can be designed to celebrate interdependence with other living systems, transforming the making and consumption of things into a regenerative force. Design can perform and preserve the extravagant gesture-in the marketplace, in the human community, and in the natural world.” |
| Buy this book from your local bookstore, order it locally through Booksense, or order it from Amazon.com. |
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| The Next Industrial Revolution |
| The Atlantic Monthly |
| October 1998 |
| by William McDonough and Michael Braungart |
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| “Our concept of eco-effectiveness leads to human industry that is regenerative rather than depletive. It involves the design of things that celebrate interdependence with other living systems. From an industrial-design perspective, it means products that work within cradle-to-cradle life cycles rather than cradle-to-grave ones.” |
| Read Article. >> |
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| A Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things |
| Delivered at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City |
| February 7, 1993 |
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| “There are certain fundamental laws that are inherent to the natural world that we can use as models and mentors for human designs. Ecology comes from the Greek roots Oikos and Logos,"household" and"logical discourse." Thus, it is appropriate, if no imperative, for architects to discourse about the logic of our earth household.” |
| Download Article. >> (PDF, 110KB) |
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| Eco-designs on future cities |
| BBC News |
| July 14, 2005 |
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| "Internationally renowned designer, sustainability architect and author of Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough, argues that we can only think of our future cities if we think about what our intention is as a species....'The goal is a safe, healthy, just world, clean air, soil and power, that is elegantly enjoyed.'" |
| Read article. >> |
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| Designing the Future |
| Newsweek |
| May 16, 2005 |
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| "The Industrial Revolution as a whole was not designed. It took shape gradually as industrialists and engineers figured out how to make things. The result is that we put billions of pounds of toxic materials in the air, water and soil every year and generate gigantic amounts of waste. If our goal is to destroy the world -- to produce global warming and toxicity and endocrine disruption -- we're doing great. But if the goal isn't global warming, what is? I want to crank the wheel of industry in a different direction to produce a world of abundance and good design -- a delightful, safe world that our children can play in." |
| Read the interview with Anne Underwood. >> |
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| Eternal Optimist |
| Metropolis Magazine |
| February 2005 |
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| "Our job is to work with reality, start on the ground, and then imagine what a future might look like. A number of years ago someone asked me, 'Mr. McDonough, how long is this sustainability stuff going to take?' I said, 'It’s going to take forever. That’s the point.'” |
| Read the interview with Martin Pedersen. >> |
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| Masters of Design: William McDonough |
| Fast Company |
| May 2004 |
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| "If architect William McDonough ever loses sight of his ambition to redesign the world, he need look no further than the carpet under his feet. There, covering the floor of his sunbathed corner office, is the future: one of the first products of what McDonough calls the 'next Industrial Revolution.'" |
| Read Article. >> |
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| Prophet of Bloom |
| Wired Magazine |
| February 2002 |
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| “...he envisions a technically advanced world of zero waste, where nothing ever hits the trash bin and all materials, under a kind of karmic destiny, can be recovered to lead productive lives over and over again.... [His] contribution is that he is starting to develop the necessary technologies that might make it all work.” |
| Read Article. >> |
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| Think Green |
| Metropolis Magazine |
| August/September 2001 |
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| “They were—or should have been—strange rostrum-fellows: managers of textile firms, directors of factories, executives from the world's largest automakers. These "eco-outlaws" shared the stage with America's foremost green architect, William McDonough, and Dr. Michael Braungart, his radical German chemist counterpart, on the final day of a recent sustainability conference—lions of commerce lying down with eco-lambs.” |
| Read Article. >> |
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| A Whole New World: Hero for the Planet |
| Time Magazine |
| February 22, 1999 |
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| “. . . (A)fter a day of McDonough's instruction in much more than architecture, one sees that his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world.” |
| Read Article. >> |
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While some environmental observers predict scenarios in which a rapidly increasing human population is forced to compete for ever scarcer natural resources, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart see an exciting and hopeful future. In their vision, humanity takes nature itself as our guide, reinventing technical enterprises to be as safe and ever-renewing as natural processes. It's part of what architect McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart call The Next Industrial Revolution.
