Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

William (Bill) McDonough is co-author of Cradle to Cradle and an American architect. His worldview and design principles were shaped by experiences outside of the United States: “I was influenced strongly by experiences I’d had abroad—first in Japan, where I spent my early childhood. I recall a sense of land and resources being scarce but also the beauty of traditional Japanese homes, with their paper walls and dripping gardens, their warm futons and steaming baths” (7). One of the main tenets of McDonough’s beliefs about architecture is that it should be simple, elegant, and in line with the “natural flows” of the surrounding environment.

In 1981, he founded his own design firm based in New York, and in 1984, the Environmental Defense Fund commissioned his company to help design their “so-called green” offices. In doing so, he discovered how little research there was on environmentally-sound designs. He also discovered how the design community frowned upon environmentally-oriented designers, as “[m]any […] applied environmental ‘solutions’ in isolation, tacking new technology onto the same old model […] The resulting buildings were often ugly and obtrusive, and they were often not very effective” (9). This experience served as one of many impetuses for the McDonough to develop his and Braungart’s eco-effective model.