Eco-Effectiveness: A New Design Strategy

William McDonough,

Co -founder and CEO of McDonough

Braungart Design Chemistry and

Principal at William McDonough + Partners

Dr. Michael Braungart,

Co -founder and Chairman of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry

410 East Water Street, Suite 500

Charlottesville, VA 22902

http://www.mcdonough.com/

www.mbdc.com

In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker describes such a business leader as someone who is doing the right thing. It might seem easy to transfer this advice to sustainable architecture and design. The right thing must be to make buildings and systems that pollute, contaminate, and deplete less than their predecessors do, right? But in doing that we simply become more efficient at the wrong thing. And in letting us think that we are achieving environmental progress, this strategy might be even more pernicious. We must instead start with a more difficult question; what is the right thing?

Our answer is eco-effectiveness. Eco-effectiveness is a broad strategy, not just an ecological one. It engages the idea of an effective economy producing profits for companies i n the business of making profits, while treating people fairly and well and respecting, even celebrating, the natural world, This goes beyond a more conventional single-issue approach, which might focus, for example, on social responsibility or energy efficiency.

The current architectural paradigm produces houses that are machines for living in, office buildings that are machines for working in, and churches that are machines for praying in. Buildings end up with sealed, tinted windows that minimize the amount of daylight coming in to cut heat gain. Their air-conditioning systems provide little fresh air. This building type has been designed more for the efficiency of its operations (that is, its machines) than for the people inside. In other words, it is a work support system for people who don't, it seems, have a life. Such design can be seen as timefully mindless: it is done in a hurry and it is mindless of its effects, both physical and psychological, on the human beings who use the building. It is mindless, as well, of its effects on the larger planetary system on the forests, water and air quality, species abundance, soil health, and so on.

When faced with this current state of architecture, designers must understand that being less bad (or more efficient) is not necessarily being good. Eco-effectiveness recognizes this crucial point. So what then does it mean to be good, to do the right thing?

How about designing a building that nourishes and restores living systems? That engages propitiously with the industrial system in a way that does not destroy nature? Imagine a structure that is actually fecund, providing more to the environment than it takes away; that engages with the sun the way a tree does, with a photosynthetic connection, moisture transpiration, habitation by hundreds of species, transformation of microclimate, distillation of water, and production of complex sugars and carbohydrates; that sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, and changes with the seasons, Imagine a building like a tree, a city like a forest.

Eco-effective design requires a reconsideration of the very concept of high technology, How many modern designs are as elegant and sophisticated as a tree? How many buildings have humans designed that produce oxygen:. Is a high-tech building one that destroys air quality or enhances it?

William McDonough + Partners designs buildings that attempt to achieve these goals. A building we designed for The Gap in San Bruno, California, features an undulating meadow of grasses on its roof to invite songbirds back to the site, to absorb stormwater, and to provide a delightful environment for the inhabitants of the area. A building we designed for Oberlin College in Ohio will generate more energy than it needs do operate -in effect paying back its energy mortgage-and is modeled on fecund and generative natural systems.

McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry is designing products that do not follow the traditional pro- duce/use/discard model. Instead, they are "products of service": customers buy products' services, not their materials. Take industrial carpet, for example. Customers use our carpet for as long as they need it or as long as it lasts. When it is time for replacement, the carpet is returned to the manufacturer for true recycling. (Most conventional recycling is actually "downcycling," which reduces a material's quality and its potential uses over time.) We are also designing fabrics that, when they abrade in normal use, are safe to breathe in, rather than using materials that can fill indoor air with toxins.

Architecture can be a healing act, We look forward to a time when products and buildings are designed as nutrients, of office buildings full of daylight and fresh air that send you home refreshed, of houses that feel like natural extensions of place and psyche. These are rich agendas, not simply the technological and stylistic loss of current fashion.

From the level of the molecule to that of the region, design can be utterly transforming. It can, in fact, move humans from a strategy of tragedy to a strategy of change. These strategies of change allow for healthy, beautiful, profitable products and systems. But first, designers must fiercely confront the important questions of their day. We believe one of the most important questions in this age is, how do we love all the children, of all species, for all time? Not just some of the children, but all of the children. With such a question in mind, it is easy to understand the tremendous transforming pourer of good design.

Reprinted from

Sustainable Architecture: Whitepapers

Promoting Sustainability Since 1991