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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

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William McDonough
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 20
Architect
Designer
Environmentalist
Writer
Tōkyō
William Andrews McDonough
Zero
Shoot
Blow
Away
Wells
Might
Well
Dry
Like
Carbon

More quotes by 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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Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.
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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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
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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
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Carbon in your body - that's good thing. In a tree, it's good. In the atmosphere, it's a bad. Nature wants to sequester carbon in biota. And when we burn it, we release it. It's the wrong system.
William McDonough
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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
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Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture.'
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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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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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
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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
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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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Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place
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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You need that same creative force that exists in a building like Disney [Walt Disney Concert Hall] to actually tackle that most prosaic of problems.
William McDonough
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In planetary terms, we're all downstream.
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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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
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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