William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things and founder of William McDonough + Partners (WM+P), was recently a guest on Bill Nye’s Science Rules! podcast. During the episode, Nye and his co-host Corey S. Powell asked McDonough about his diverse areas of impact, including product chemistry, plastics and packaging, and architecture.
In addition to speaking about his work on accelerating the Circular Economy broadly, McDonough shared William McDonough + Partners’ work with IBM in The Netherlands to create a headquarters that was designed for disassembly and to be converted to housing in the future. On the topic of design for disassembly, the three also discussed WM+P’s Mass Timber design for Apex Clean Energy, currently under construction.
When prompted to share his favorite building, McDonough told the story of designing the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College — the first Net Zero Verified building. McDonough told Nye and Powell that he wanted the building to go beyond carbon neutral to be “carbon positive,” producing 40% more energy than it needs to operate and sharing renewable energy with its neighbors.
The conversation closed with Nye saying that William’s Cradle to Cradle Design Framework was “the key to the future.”
Listen to the podcast to learn more about Cradle to Cradle Design for the built environment.
