Green Machine
Portrait: William McDonough
Rohner Textil had a problem. The Swiss manufacturer was on the cutting edge of environmentally friendly manufacturing. Even so, the government was telling the firm that clippings from its bolts of fabric were too full of poisonous dyes and chemicals to bury or burn. What the Swiss regulators were saying, in effect, was that the furniture being shipped to offices around the country was upholstered with toxic waste.
That was 1993. Today, thanks largely to the work of American architect and designer William McDonough, Rohner is a model of Earth-friendly commerce. McDonough and his team systematically analyzed almost 8,000 commonly used chemicals for toxicity--not an easy task since most suppliers considered the information a trade secret. They narrowed the list down to a mere 38 that they graded "environmentally intelligent"--substances that weren't just nontoxic but actually had a positive impact on the environment. When the new line of natural-fiber fabrics first went into production in 1995, the factory was as impressive as the cloth it produced: Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. The wastewater was cleaner than the local drinking water. A garden club had started using the factory's waste as mulch. And demand for the new Climatex Lifecycle fabric boomed.
It seems counterintuitive--good for the environment, good for people, and good for the bottom line? But as far as the 51-year-old McDonough is concerned, working with business is the only way to change the world. In his new (and totally recyclable) book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, coauthored with German industrial chemist and former Greenpeace activist Michael Braungart, McDonough is working to convince environmentalists and capitalists they have a common cause. What sets the architect apart is his rejection of traditional environmentalist attitudes. He discards as simplistic the notion of growth vs. no growth. "Most environmentalists are saying be less bad," he says. "We think growth is good. It just has to be something you would be happy to see growing." What makes him happy? Truly recyclable materials (as opposed to "downcycling," the common type of recycling where each incarnation of the material is lower quality until it ends up in a dump) and buildings that find an equilibrium between environmental sensitivity, livability, and the bottom line.
Son of invention. Born into the world of commerce--his father was an executive in the Seagram's liquor company--McDonough is no stranger to the culture of business. But it was as a Yale architecture student during the energy crisis of the early 1970s that he became concerned about the business world's indifference to the environment. "The professional architecture world did not have the word `ecology' in their textbooks," he says.
McDonough sketches his philosophy in a triangle, with economic returns, social good, and environmental benefits at the three corners. Instead of the either-or trade-offs typically associated with the environmental movement--build green or build cheap--McDonough believes it is possible to aim for the middle of the triangle, maximizing all three factors. Traditional thinking is that the way to build green is to, say, build a sealed box that costs less to cool because you can't open the windows and it's dark inside. But McDonough is convinced that with creative architecture and design, appealing workspaces can coexist with environmental efficiency and remain sound business decisions.
He has won a lot of converts. His small firm, based in a converted vegetable warehouse in Charlottesville, Va., has pulled in commissions and awards from all over the world, for projects ranging from factories to fabrics. Clients include historically progressive institutions like Oberlin College and the Environmental Defense Fund as well as corporate giants like Nike, Johnson International, and IBM.
His biggest coup will be on display next year just outside of Detroit--the first phase of a planned two-decade effort to totally redesign Ford Motor Co.'s original plant on Michigan's Rouge River. The centerpiece will be 10 acres of grass on top of the plant, a "habitat roof" that will filter rainwater into porous parking lots and then into culverts and green spaces surrounding the facility, naturally cleansing the plant's runoff before it hits the Rouge River. The grass plot will also insulate the roof, a feature engineers estimate will double or even quadruple its lifespan. "The scale and context will be unique," says Tim O'Brien, Ford Motor Co.'s vice president of real estate. "Nobody's ever done close to 10 acres, let alone on top of an active heavy manufacturing center."
The roof will cost about $15 million more than a conventional design. But McDonough argued the long view: The natural filtering system will mean that the company will save $50 million by not having to build a wastewater chemical treatment facility. Such attention to the bottom line helped convince Ford that the project would be more than a PR move. "This is not environmental philanthropy," Chairman and CEO Bill Ford said when plans for overhauling the historic Rouge plant were announced. "This is sound business." Adds O'Brien: "We gave McDonough the opportunity to demonstrate his vision could work, and he did it here."
What if . . . ? McDonough has a habit of lacing conversations with the phrase "What if . . . ?" His utopian bent has won over many corporate leaders, but he's had less luck with guys in the trenches. To engineers and middle-level managers, such visionary talk sounds scary, not inspirational. For example, when McDonough's team first started working at Ford's plant, a steady stream of baffled engineers came to O'Brien to complain about McDonough's odd requests. "Going out to test the soil without any legal requirements, just to see what the contamination issues were? Unheard of," O'Brien laughs. "It was definitely a coming together of very different cultures."
Some environmentalists are uncomfortable with the enthusiasm for business McDonough embodies, questioning the need to constantly justify good environmental design in terms of cost and vague promises of increased productivity. "Why shouldn't corporations do it just because people will go home at night and feel healthy?" asks David Gissen, a professor at Penn State and curator of an exhibit on green architecture at the National Building Museum that will include several of McDonough's projects. That he's working with Ford at all has drawn criticism from environmentalists who see clients like Ford and the Gap as the enemy. McDonough bristles at those attitudes. "Who are we supposed to work with? At least they're leading and trying to go forward," he says. "People need to recognize the need of industry to transform--to move as quickly as possible toward the positive alternatives. Our job is to provide those positive alternatives."
McDonough has designed several buildings in California's Silicon Valley, where a balmy landscape is dominated by sealed glass office boxes. At San Jose tech company Aspect Communications, workers are enthusiastic about the airy structure that opened a year ago. They can control the air flow in their cubicles, high-ceilinged rooms are filled with natural light, and windows open onto a courtyard filled with picnic tables and native grass. McDonough insisted on controlling the building materials, too--from the recycled glass bathroom tiles to the ceiling fabric, made of recycled plastic soda bottles.
Jim Zuiderhoek, who until last week was the facilities manager there, says the building has saved almost 10 percent on its power bills compared with the previous headquarters. With fine-tuning, Aspect could save even more, a significant issue in California's pricey energy market. The building's biggest design flaw so far? "We've had two birds fly in," says Zuiderhoek. "It took my guys an hour to get them out." Back to nature.
MAN WITH A PLAN
". . .Growth is good. It just has to be something you would be happy to see growing."
BORN Feb. 20, 1951
EDUCATION B.A., Dartmouth, 1973; M.Arch., Yale University School of Architecture, 1976
MAJOR PROJECTS Gap Inc. corporate headquarters; Nike European headquarters; Ford Rouge manufacturing complex
This story appears in the August 5, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.