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Correction: I
meant to say that “imaginative [use
of] science is the creative tool”…to solve many of our problems ahead. kwc -----Original
Message----- 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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