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William McDonough

William Andrews McDonough (b. February 21, 1951, Hong Kong) is an American architect and founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, whose career is focused on designing environmentally sustainable buildings and transforming industrial manufacturing processes.

McDonough was born in Hong Kong the son of an American Seagram's executive, and trained at Dartmouth College and Yale University. In 1981 McDonough founded his practice, and his first major commission was the 1984 Environmental Defense Fund Headquarters. According to a profile in Metropolis Magazine, the EDF told him he would be sued if any employees became sick from noxious elements in the construction material; when McDonough asked his suppliers to provide him with a list of chemicals in their products, he was told it was proprietary information.

A number of large corporate projects for The Gap, Nike, and Herman Miller, which focused on both a financial and environmental standpoint, led to his commission for a 20-year, US$2 billion environmental re-engineering of the Ford Motor Company's legendary River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The project included rolling out the world's largest extensive "living roof" in October 2002. The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing ground cover.

In 1996 McDonough became the first and only individual recipient of the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. In 1999 Time Magazine called him "Hero for the Planet". In 2002 he wrote (with Michael Braungart) "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things". In 2004 he received a National Design Award for environmental design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

McDonough's practice is currently located in Charlottesville, Virginia, with a small office in San Francisco, California. McDonough moved his practice from New York City to Charlottesville in 1994, when he was appointed as the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. He relinquished this position in 1999 to focus on expanding his professional practice.

In August 2008, the California Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) along with The California EPA invited McDonough to speak in Sacramento, CA on what is described as the "cornerstone of the DTSC's Green Chemistry program", a unique and new state program developed to promote sustainable manufacturing and design. McDonough is said to envision a society that does not produce waste but instead produces nutrients from former waste products.

Published works

Braungart, Michael; & McDonough, William (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press. ISBN 0-86547-587-3. This book was not printed on conventional paper, but on Durabook, a trademark of Melcher Media, a synthetic, waterproof "paper" that is largely polypropylene film.

Honors

William McDonough was honored by the New York Open Center in 2004 for his "Pioneering Leadership in Environmentally Suatainable Architecture and Re-Visioning Industrial Civilization"