Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William McDonough
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 20
Architect
Designer
Environmentalist
Writer
Tōkyō
William Andrews McDonough
Energy
Trees
Purer
Form
Release
Purify
Like
Climate
Solar
Waste
Consume
Produce
Buildings
Building
Store
Exporters
Tree
Slowly
Accrue
Water
Stores
Proposing
More quotes by William McDonough
If design is the first signal of human intention.
William McDonough
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
All these corporate reports say they want zero carbon. Well that is ridiculous, because you are not telling us what you are, you are telling us what you are not.
William McDonough
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
Modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, I didn't intend to cause global warning, it's not part of my plan, then we realize it's part of our defacto plan because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan.
William McDonough
It would be nice if all that exuberance and abundance was connected to a deep ethos of planetary responsibility.
William McDonough
Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture.'
William McDonough
I'd rather have that dialogue right now than only the other one, which is starting at such a basic level, that we start rearranging stuff on the Titanic, trying to be less bad with ordinary stuff.
William McDonough
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
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
Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place
William McDonough
We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away.
William McDonough
This idea that things are designed to go back to nature or industry for ever which is our articulation of these two metabolisms are actually a discovery not an invention.
William McDonough
I am working right at both the levels- with the most wealthy clients in the world, but also the poorest. I spend half my time designing for people that have nothing.
William McDonough
The problem carbon is that everyone thinks we have an energy problem, we don't. We have plenty of energy. We have a carbon problem. Carbon is a material, so we have a material problem, not an energy problem.
William McDonough
We are not a green standard, we are a quality standard. We're different, we're multi dimensional.
William McDonough
You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.
William McDonough
Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle.
William McDonough
It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works.
William McDonough
If you don't like carbon, if you want to be zero carbon, then you might as well shoot yourself, dry up and blow away because you are carbon.
William McDonough
