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Toxic rubber
duckies: McDonough has come up with an apt symbol for the lack of forethought
we have employed in designing the world around us. From what we know today,
precautionary principles are the futurist and realist operating procedures and
imaginary science the creative tool. kwc An Environmental Problem Slipping Through the
Quacks By Linda Hales,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, August 27, 2005; C01 Environmental
architect William McDonough made a powerful case for a "new industrial
revolution" when he planted a living roof in 2002 atop Ford's sprawling,
grime-choked River Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Mich. The feat of green
design is said to have saved the beleaguered carmaker $35 million in
environmental cleanup costs. Birds now lay eggs in the flourishing 10-acre blanket
of sedum, which cleans runoff naturally. On Wednesday, the
visionary from Charlottesville made an even stronger argument for change with a
little yellow rubber ducky. In a speech to the
Industrial Designers Society of America, which is meeting at the Marriott
Wardman Park through Saturday, McDonough noted that in California, the $2.99
bath toy comes with a warning. Toxic chemicals in that sweet, squishy body have
been known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. "What kind of
society would make something like this to put in the mouths of children?"
McDonough demanded. "Design is the first signal of human intention. What
is your intention?" No designer rose to
defend the duck. McDonough moved on to
the usual suspects: belching smokestacks, chemical fumes in carpets, hazardous
high-tech garbage. IQs are declining in industrial Ohio. A graveyard of
plastics is growing in the Pacific Ocean. Acidification is turning coral, the
bottom of the food chain, to jelly. "Our current society has a strategy of tragedy,"
he said. "These are the things that are
happening because we have no other plan." McDonough has been
practicing, writing and preaching ecologically sensitive, socially just design
for more than 20 years. Style is one thing, but in terms of transforming the
planet, no designer is more important to watch now. He argues that a "diverse, safe, healthy and just world
with clean air, water, soil and power" is attainable by redesigning the way we make things, without waste and in harmony with nature.
PepsiCo, Shaw Industries, Steelcase, BASF and Nike have signed on. But change
comes in fits and starts. On the other side of
the wall, the year's neat new products and prototypes were arrayed in an
exhibition hall. An Erik Buell motorcycle and Gerber's new plastic
snack-and-sippy cup drew admiring glances. On the edge of the bazaar, companies
that supply designers with polymers and other synthetic materials were
marketing their wares. "Benzene coming
off gaskets," McDonough warned as he passed through. A clear danger of
phthalates, the chemicals used to soften plastics, which have just been banned
in toys in Europe. McDonough's 10-year-old son, Drew, was briefly mesmerized by
a display of hot pink, green and orange plastic guitars. How much time before
we self-destruct? "Twenty
years," McDonough guessed. "We have 20 years to figure this out. We
have to work quickly, we have to work systematically, we have to integrate this
into everything we do." McDonough, who is
designing American University's School of International Service, was just past
30 when he kick-started the green architecture movement. Born in Japan in 1951,
and raised partly in Hong Kong, he earned degrees at Dartmouth and Yale before
opening a studio in New York. He designed a solar-heated house in Ireland. A
1984 commission from the Environmental Defense Fund led to a landmark
eco-friendly office. In 1994 he moved the
firm, William McDonough + Partners, to Charlottesville to become dean of
architecture at the University of Virginia. By the time he relinquished the
post in 1999, the firm had won awards for a daylight-filled factory for the
Herman Miller furniture company in Holland, Mich., and a campus for Gap in San
Bruno, Calif. President Clinton gave him the only White House award so far for
sustainable design. On campus, McDonough
was known as the "Green Dean," who promoted "zero pollution and
total recycling." That philosophy defines the work of MBDC, the product
design firm he formed in 1995 with German chemist and Green Party figure Michael
Braungart. After producing clean carpeting for Warren Buffett's Shaw
Industries, they published their ideas in "Cradle to Cradle" in 2002.
The book has made McDonough a welcome visitor in enlightened executive suites. Tenets of the eco-design revolution
include waste equals food; effectiveness is better than efficiency; and being
less bad is not good enough. Biological materials can be recycled back into the
earth. Hard goods ought to be designed for dismantling and reuse. Regeneration
is "the infinite game." Regulation is a failure of design. It would be easy to
close the book's synthetic cover -- no trees were destroyed -- and dismiss the
dream, except that the Chinese have adopted the concepts wholeheartedly. The
government plans to provide new
housing for 400 million people in 12 years, McDonough says, and has published "Cradle
to Cradle" as government policy. (There, the title translates into "virtuous circle.") McDonough has been hired to develop
entire cities as model eco-urban environments -- without sprawl, congestion,
pollution, waste or reliance on fossil fuels. One plan shows a
compact urban zone with solar-powered buildings layered with commerce and
housing. Rooftops support solar panels or agriculture. Aerial bridges would
allow farmers to travel from field to field six stories off the ground. McDonough does not
worry that the Chinese may beat the West to clean, efficient, affordable
modernization in the 21st century.
"It's not something to be panicked about, it's something to go
after," he says. "Let's go after global quality." That pro-growth,
capitalist optimism has made McDonough palatable to business. The pressure he
puts on designers is relentless. Shaun Jackson, the IDSA conference chairman,
expected the audience to be "inspired but uncomfortable." They design
the cars, computers, skateboards, diapers and rubber duckies, not to mention
the packagings, that are piling up in landfills. "You may be
making a beautiful car, but it's causing global warming," McDonough said.
"What have you done?" After his speech, a
General Motors executive was waiting to shake McDonough's hand. Douglas Soller,
a senior research designer for S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., maker of Ziploc,
Windex and Drano, said, "He struck a nerve loud and deep." The MBDC consultancy
is about to raise the bar. Next month, it will begin to certify products for
"eco-effectiveness." A Web site is imminent. One day
soon, consumers will be able to shop by the cradle-to-cradle label. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601888_2.html?nav=hcmodule |
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