In this Ted Talk, we hear William McDonough talk about how design is the first sign of human intention and how if we want to do good things for the world we live in we should start doing it in design, giving the example of Hiroshima and how something that took thousands of years to build, took seconds to destroy. He continues his lecture by talking about the definition of a living organism: it has to have growth, income, and an open system of chemicals; and how he likes to use this notion to design buildings like trees. Using the concept of a natural metabolism to think of a technical metabolism that would work alongside the first one for the good of the species.
He talks about how important the materials we use are and how we should choose materials that can go back to nature or go back to the industry to produce something else, he calls them technical nutrients. Materials that we should pick so that we could use them forever without creating more waste. McDonough says that a toxin is a material in the wrong place so we should place them where they benefit the environment and not where they would be considered a toxin.
He says that it’s not enough just to stop doing “the bad” (polluting, producing waste, contaminating) but we need to start increasing “the good” and doing smart designs. The things we make should be an asset to humans and not a liability. We should think about the design of the future when designing the present, meaning designing the things we make now with a use for the future in other designs instead of only being waste.
He finishes by saying that chemicals make everything around us and they always come back to the ground, therefore this notion should be included in the fundamental principles that drive our designs. He encourages everyone to think about how we can make designs that will benefit the environment in the ways he mentioned before and to start not only thinking but also doing, it’s time to take action in the matter.
