Making Good: William McDonough by April Streeter - 2.1.05 Editor's note: My second conversation with maverick architect and
designer William McDonough had an entirely different flavor than our
first nearly three years ago. In that first interview, for the
now-defunct Tomorrow Magazine, McDonough was basking in media limelight
from his work on revamping Ford Motor Corp.’s Rouge factory in
Michigan. The seminal design treatise he wrote with partner Michael
Braungart, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things,” had
just been published, and McDonough was eager to explain all facets of
the book’s design philosophy.
In this interview, a slightly different McDonough emerges,
no less engaging and engaged (in fact with a pantheon of grand
projects, such as designing from scratch entire Chinese cities), but
with a slightly more wistful and irreverent edge. It was not that
McDonough was less optimistic about the ability of thoughtful design to
solve some of society’s problems. Rather, it seemed that - in light of
the ever-growing list of Earth’s ecological woes - McDonough is more
acutely aware of a collective need to shift to mindful design, of
everything from chairs to carpets to cityscapes.
Part I
SIJ: Aren’t we still designing products as if there were no tomorrow?
