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

William McDonough

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William McDonough
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 20
Architect
Designer
Environmentalist
Writer
Tōkyō
William Andrews McDonough
First
Visible
Intention
Dreams
Renders
Design
Signal
Dream
Designing
Firsts
Signals
Human
Intentions
Humans
Hopes

More quotes by William McDonough

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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
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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
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Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place
William McDonough
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I just think it is so delightful to see people, let their elbows free. I think the exuberance of it all is really exciting to me. It's a signal of the abundance of diversity and creative expression.
William McDonough
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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
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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
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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
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It would be nice if all that exuberance and abundance was connected to a deep ethos of planetary responsibility.
William McDonough
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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
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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
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We prefer to talk about 100% renewable instead of zero carbon. When you say zero carbon, you are not positively defined.
William McDonough
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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
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Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.
William McDonough
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If you don't have an end game of something delightful, you're just moving chess pieces around.
William McDonough
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Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.
William McDonough
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You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.
William McDonough
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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
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So when you see a regulation against lead, because lead is a bad in a regulators mind, what does that mean? You are not telling us what is good, you are just tell us what you don't want, not what you do want.
William McDonough
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It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works.
William McDonough
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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