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William McDonough

William McDonough Quotes

Designer

William McDonough is a renowned American designer known for his contributions to the field of sustainable design. Born on February 21, 1951, he is a versatile designer with expertise in architecture, industrial design, and urban planning.

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All Design Carbon Ifs Humans Problem World Materials Products Want Energy

Famous William McDonough Quotes

“Design is the first signal of human intention. When we look at plastics in our environment, if it's our intention to do these things then we must question our intentions. If it's not our intention, then what's our plan? The question becomes how we can behave in a way that works.”

Design Intention Systems Thinking Circular Design Cradle To Cradle

Author:William McDonough

“Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.”

Design Optimistic

Author: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.”

World Needs Looks Home Action Earth Together Vision Moon Missions Lofty Together We Can

Author:William McDonough

“Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.”

Source: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“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."”

Source: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“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.”

Mean Helping Perfect Business Products Concepts Tools Right Thing Efficiency Effectiveness Wrong Things Doing The Right Thing Eco

Book:Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Source: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“In planetary terms, we're all downstream.”

Book:Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Source: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“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.”

Want Earth Products Waste Graves Cycles Cradle

Author: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.”

Ifs Culture Causes Realizing Plans Modern Happenings Tragedy Strategy Warning Adopted Modern Culture

Author:William McDonough

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

Ifs Ends Moving Games Pieces Chess Delightful Chess Pieces

Author:William McDonough

“It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works.”

Sound Strange Frank

Author:William McDonough

“I just think it is so delightful to see people, let their elbows free. I think the exuberance of it all is really exciting to me. It's a signal of the abundance of diversity and creative expression.”

People Thinking Creative Expression Diversity Exciting Abundance Delightful Signals Elbows Exuberance Creative Expression

Author:William McDonough

“It would be nice if all that exuberance and abundance was connected to a deep ethos of planetary responsibility.”

Ifs Would Be Responsibility Nice Connected Abundance Being Nice Ethos Exuberance

Author:William McDonough

“I'd so much rather have exciting architecture that causes one to stop, breathe, and reflect on the potential of the human mind, the craft, and exploring things.”

Mind Humans Causes Exciting Breathe Architecture Crafts Human Mind Exploring

Author:William McDonough

“I'd rather have that dialogue right now than only the other one, which is starting at such a basic level, that we start rearranging stuff on the Titanic, trying to be less bad with ordinary stuff.”

Trying Stuff Levels Right Now Ordinary Starting Dialogue Rearranging

Author: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.”

People World Levels Half Design My Time Wealthy Clients Poorest

Author: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.”

Needs Problem Force Creative Building Halls Concerts Walt

Author:William McDonough

“We are not a green standard, we are a quality standard. We're different, we're multi dimensional.”

Different Quality Standards Green

Author:William McDonough

“We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away.”

Author: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.”

Two Ideas Industry Discovery Invention Metabolism Articulation

Author: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.”

Want Mind Mean Doe Regulation Regulators

Author: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.”

Thinking Problem Energy Materials Plenty Carbon

Author: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.”

Said Problem Natural Levels Materials Atmosphere Carbon Lead In Biosphere

Author: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.”

Ifs Want Wells Might Blow Dry Zero Carbon Dry Up

Author: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.”

Want Body Tree Good Things Your Body Release Atmosphere Carbon

Author: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.”

People Want Problem Issues Bad Things Zero Carbon

Author: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.”

Want Wells Ridiculous Corporate Reports Zero Carbon

Author: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.”

Imagine Walking Sitting Empty Ridiculous Carbon Groceries Jars

Author:William McDonough

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

Defined Zero Carbon Positively

Author: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!”

Use Happens Energy Fun Millions Minutes Environmental Nuclear Miles Enormous Fusion Wireless Nuclear Bomb Nuclear Energy Fission Nuclear Reactors Nuclear Fission Nuclear Fusion

Author: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?'”

Humans Ends Use Interest Climate Change

Author: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”

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

Problem Water Inspiring Existence Design Filters

Author:William McDonough

“Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place”

People World Trying Business Economics Management Optimistic Designer Better Place

Author: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.”

Ifs Years Inspiration Motivation Progress Trouble Design Humility Concepts Invention Wheels Reflecting Luggage

Author: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.”

World Use Tree Effects Materials Products Industry Safe Climate Celebrate Abundance Consumption Delightful Cherries Eco Cherry Trees

Author: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.”

Form Energy Water Tree Produce Building Waste Climate Stores Release Solar Energy

Author:William McDonough

“How do we love all the children of all species for all time?”

Children Species All Time

Author: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.”

Trying Be Good Earnest Stop Trying Redesign

Book:Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Source: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture.'”

Men Young Energy Architecture Young Man Solar Energy

Author: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?”

“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.”

Mean Doe Understanding Design Products Waste Concepts Packaging

Author: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?”

Ifs Children I Can Beautiful Imagine Planets Sick Intelligent Destroying Being Beautiful

Author: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.”

Thinking Humans Ends Age Stones Architecture Ran Stone Age

Author: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.”

Ifs Thinking Forever Design Industry Multiple Cradle

Author: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?”

Writing Self Use Water Nature Imagine Tree Design Food Color Seasons Down And Complexes Sugar Carbon Elegant Oxygen Knocking Fixing Assignments Replicate Nitrogen Distillation

Author:William McDonough

“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.”

Thinking World Order Realizing Design Intention Designer Inherent Signals

Author:William McDonough

“If design is the first signal of human intention.”

Firsts Humans Design Intention Signals

Author:William McDonough

“Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.”

World Goal Water Air Healthy Safe Clean Enjoyed Soil Diverse Clean Air

Author: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.”

About the Author

Born: February 21, 1951
Known for: Designer
Quotes: 54

Related Topics

Design Carbon Ifs Humans Problem World Materials Products Want Energy

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Books & Sources

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make ThingsRelated source material

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