William McDonough famous quotes

Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions.
-- William McDonough

#Dream #Design #Firsts

If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.
-- William McDonough

#Humility #Years #Design

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it?
-- William McDonough

#Writing #Self #Oxygen

You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.
-- William McDonough

#Inspiring #Water #Design

Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.
-- William McDonough

#Optimistic #Design

The surest way to heal an eco-system is to connect it to more of itself.
-- William McDonough

#Way #Heal

Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they are designed for - a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" - a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality.
-- William McDonough

#Community #Mind #Trying

Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!
-- William McDonough

#Fun #Nuclear #Use

Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.
-- William McDonough

#Taken #Animal #Swings

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.
-- William McDonough

#Thinking #Age #Stones

The eco-effective future of industry is a world of abundance that celebrates the use and consumption of products and materials that are, in effect, nutritious - as safe, effective, and delightful as a cherry tree.
-- William McDonough

#Tree #Use #World

Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.
-- William McDonough

#Forever #Sustainability

Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place
-- William McDonough

#Business #Optimistic #People

We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem
-- William McDonough

#Fall #Effectiveness #Tree

Honor commerce as the engine of change.
-- William McDonough

#Change #Honor #Commerce

In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?'
-- William McDonough

#Use #Climate Change #Ends

We achieved our mission to the moon. Let's look home from that lofty perch and reimagine our mission on Earth - that is what we need to do here. Together, we can upcycle everything. The world will be better for our positive visions and actions.
-- William McDonough

#Home #Moon #Vision

The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones.
-- William McDonough

#Age #Stones #Ends

Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.
-- William McDonough

#Air #Water #Goal

Design is the first signal of human intention.
-- William McDonough

#Design #Firsts #Intention

Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,'
-- William McDonough

#Men #Energy #Architecture

We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?
-- William McDonough

#Creativity #Intelligent #Vision

To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things-products, packaging, and systems-from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist.
-- William McDonough

#Mean #Design #Understanding

I can't imagine something being beautiful at this point in history if it's destroying the planet or causing children to get sick. How can anything be beautiful if it's not ecologically intelligent at this point?
-- William McDonough

#Beautiful #Children #Intelligent

How do we love all the children of all species for all time?
-- William McDonough

#Children #All Time #Species

If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.
-- William McDonough

#Thinking #Forever #Design

We are proposing buildings that, like trees, are net energy exporters, produce more energy than they consume, accrue and store solar energy, and purify their own waste, water and release it slowly in a purer form.
-- William McDonough

#Water #Tree #Waste

I think as designers we realize design is a signal of intention, but it also has to occur within a world and we have to understand that world in order to imbue our designs with inherent intelligence.
-- William McDonough

#Thinking #Order #Design

Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.
-- William McDonough

#Trying #Stop Trying #Be Good