Bill McDonough in Columbia, SC. Cradle to cradle.
I attended the lecture series last night at the Moore School of Business, a one hour talk by American architect Bill McDonough. My brother-in-law architect from Toronto contacted me via Twitter and indicated that this was something that I should not miss.
He told me about Bill McDonough a year ago and suggested that I should do an interview with this giant in the world of sustainability. The interview did not materialize, but we did incorporate some of McDonough’s ideas about Cradle to Cradle design in our 2009 Market Trends magazine. McWaters is a local distributor of Steelcase office furniture. Steelcase has embraced McDonough’s philosophies. Many other large, global companies have too.
I perused the lecture hall for people, particularly architects that I might know from around town. How big was Bill McDonough? 40 people were in the room.
“Growth is good. Regulation is a sign of bad design. Nature does not have a design problem; human beings do. Does our species have a plan? What is our intention? What does it mean to be 100% renewable? Less bad does not mean that it is good.” Rarely have I been at a lecture where the audience gives someone a standing ovation, let alone on a Monday night, in Columbia, SC, on the 8th floor of Moore School of Business.
Interesting. Practical. Positive. Optimistic. Authentic. A celebration of abundance, not doom and gloom. 100% sustainability. An unbelievable business opportunity for all of us.
The Moore school, already the top business school in the country, has initiated a major new strategic initiative on sustainability. Could they have found a better speaker for their lecture series? On leaving, I was wondering why the whole city of Columbia was not there.
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by C Goodman
On October 3, 2009 at 2:01 am
Keep this ball rolling in Columbia Alan. There is no reason why South Carolina couldn’t be a leader for the rest of North America in how to implement a business plan based on sustainability for the future generations….