My mother-in-law religiously sends "her son the architect" articles by the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin. From my daughter in New York City, I receive critiques and commentaries by Herbert Muschamp. And from Boston, my former roommates cut out or email Boston Globe pieces by Robert Campbell, FAIA. All thought-provoking, often agitating and intellectually stirring.

It's the kind of mental stimulation I've come over the years to expect from design correspondents and a number of professional publications such as Architectural Record. However, I cannot recall being more excited by a media story than the piece I came across in the April 8 edition of Business Week. (Full disclosure: Yes, Business Week is part of the McGraw-Hill family that includes Architectural Record.) What grabbed me was a feature under the magazine's Manufacturing Section entitled "INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION: Bill McDonough has the wild idea that he can eliminate waste. Surprise! Business is listening."

This is how it opens:

Fabrics you can eat. Buildings that generate more energy than they consume. Factories with wastewater clean enough to drink. Even toxic-free products that, instead of ending up as poison in a landfill, decompose as nutrients into the soil. No more waste. No more recycling. And no more regulation.

Such a world is the vision of environmental designer William McDonough. You might think he's half a bubble off level—until you realize that he's working with power houses like Ford, BP, DuPont, Steelcase, Nike and BASF, the world's largest producer of chemicals, to make it happen. And in the process, he's actually helping them produce substantial savings. "This is not environmental philanthropy," Ford Motor Co. CEO William Clay Ford Jr. said in 1999 when he hired McDonough to lead the $2 billion renovation of the Ford Rouge plant outside Detroit. "It's sound business."

Wow! Here is a glimpse into the future of the profession, and it's happening now.

Design Yes!
The article goes on to speak about the important transformation from doing less of harmful activities that deplete or pollute to a concept of regeneration and nutrition. For years the argument has been made that the way to a more sustainable, more ecologically sound world is to restrain growth. The method of that argument is to scold people about their wasteful ways.

McDonough sees it differently. He points out that "doing less of a bad thing doesn't make it good." Patagonia Inc. Chairman Yvon Chouinard credits McDonough with fusing two seemingly opposing world views—environmentalism and capitalism.

This is a major breakthrough. After all, buildings represent 40 percent of energy consumed and over 30 percent of landfill. Thus, what architects do and how we do it clearly have a major global impact, a fact recognized by the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE), which is actively engaged with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

When you factor in another EPA statistic—that approximately 2.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product is currently eaten up by regulations—the inescapable conclusion is that design rather than additional regulation is where we can achieve the most beneficial results, results that balance economic growth and opportunity with an ethic of sound stewardship.

Design with a capital "D"
This is an expansive definition of design that goes beyond product. It embraces the idea of process, a process characterized by an integrated and holistic approach to a broad range of issues. Take the case of resource allocation: Design so defined includes the widest possible range of issues from land use and natural climatic considerations to the chemistry of building products and ongoing facility operations. In other words, by being advocates and agents of a whole life-cycle approach to design, architects have the potential to make a transformational contribution to broader societal concerns.

The Business Week reporters who wrote the story on McDonough are on to something big, something as intellectually engaging as I've read in the architectural press. They offer a view of the changing role of the architect that builds on the following attributes:
• Our ability to use design as our core competency to address and influence global issues and provide practical, day-to-day applications that make a profound, quantifiable impact on the lives of our clients and the society we serve
• Interdisciplinary collaboration with individuals outside of our profession, as McDonough is doing with his business partner, Michael Braungart, who is a chemist rather than an architect
• Expanding services, the expanded scope ranges from strategic policy and consultation of CEOs, to land-use decisions, the design of buildings, the research and development of materials, and operational protocols.

As I look out to the shifting landscape of our ever more rapidly changing world, I am constantly amazed by the ability of architects to discover innovative paths. Most of all, at a time when respect and trust of many professions is at an all-time low, I am thrilled and encouraged to be a part of a profession that is constructive and committed to adding real value in ever-expanding ways.

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.