Green Innovator: William McDonough
April 15th, 2008 . by Caleb Chao
From Vanity Fair’s annual green issue, a fascinating look at a designer influencing the influencers — his high-profile projects include a green roof covered in native grasses for The GAP in San Bruno, Nike’s energy-effective European headquarters, and a new project with Google that’s looking big.
Mr. McDonough co-authored the groundbreaking manifesto “Cradle-to-Cradle” with a German chemist, Michael Braungart. Mr. McDonough relates an “a-ha!” moment he had one of the first times he discussed some of his ideas with Mr. Braungart amidst a flurry of diagramming and chart-drawing. Thank goodness one of Mr. McDonough’s gifts is a knack for taking the technical and showing it to us in a way that helps us say “a-ha!” ourselves.
“Being less bad is not being good. To be efficient is the same as being less bad.”
