Cradle to Cradle

Today I looked at some of William McDOnough's architectural projects. Mr. McDOnough is the authour of the cradle to cradle movement of eco-effectiveness and the book by the same name. He discourages the "consume less" appraoch to environmentalism, and inherently limited. He argues that by merely consuming less, we only slow the rate of decent. He advocates for a truly sustainable approach where waste is fully recylcable, nourishing and beneficial.

He has been hired to design a city in China. An entire city. The city will house over 14 million people.

He describes the process of building a structure that utilizes the environment, and lets light, air, and water into the building, using them for lighting, cooling, and filtering, instead of shutting them out. He describes anticipatory building, the process of constructing a building in anticipation of a technology that does not yet exist. For instance, a headquarters he built has a south facing roof with inputs for solar panels once they become cost effective.

He designs products that are not, of themselves toxic. Carpets that can be completely recyled, timbers that are sustainably harvested. Wet lands are used to break the water's travel from the roof tops to the water source, so that they do nto erode.


Do check his web site out, and give it a moment. He has been very sucessful. As he said, if it were not cheaper to build this way, noone would be paying me: