Design Assignment
How do we love all the children of all species for all time?
Possibility begins with questions where there may be more than one answer.
Photo: Ako Tampo, via Unsplash
What the Institute is doing
Two questions the Institute is holding open, for the generations ahead.
Geothermal Possibility
The warmth beneath us is one of the great possibilities of this moment.
It localizes power, asks nothing of the sky, and runs through the night. It is not yet scaling as quickly as it could to create the longest-term benefits for future generations. The Institute is working to bring that possibility into view, and into use.
Cradle to Cradle at 25
A book that proposed waste could be food, returning at twenty-five.
At a moment when a sense of possibility is needed again, the Institute is bringing its questions back to life. They help us think across our own sectors and industries, and within them, to ask how we might design things so that future generations can continue to enjoy this place.
Fifty years of questions of possibility
For fifty years, Bill has begun by asking what might be possible.
Some questions became buildings. Some became principles. Some became a book people carried into their own work. The lesson is not certainty. It is that a question, held with care, can invite people to make the next answer visible.
A solar-heated house in Ireland
Could a house gather its comfort from the sun?
William McDonough designed the first solar-heated house in Ireland in 1976, a question made habitable.
The first green office in New York
Could a workplace start with air people could trust?
For the Environmental Defense Fund's New York offices in 1984, Bill and team made indoor air quality a design requirement.
Could a world's fair begin with design principles for all children, all species, all time?
The Hannover Principles gave that invitation a language people could carry.
Could one of the most industrial sites in America become visibly alive?
At Ford Rouge, ten acres of sedum turned a roof into a working landscape.
Could the things we make become nutrients for what comes next?
Cradle to Cradle made that question portable across products, buildings, and industries.
Geothermal, China and beyond
Could the earth's heat help answer the energy question attached to the knowledge age?
That question now belongs to this next chapter, and to the people prepared to shape it.
Geothermal Possibility
All sustainability is local. So is energy. Could the heat beneath us power what we build here?
Questions that belong together
What if the warmth beneath us is one of the great possibilities of this moment?
Business
What would make power generated in place worthy of investment at every scale?
Ecology
Could the way we make power leave soil, water, and living systems better than we found them?
Land
Where does energy belong, and who is present when that question is answered?
Governance
What kind of agreement could hold across a project, a community, and a generation?
Questions, not positions
- What if the answer is not out, but in?
- What could a community do when it can point to the source of its own power?
- What forms of prosperity become possible when energy belongs more deeply to place?
Cradle to Cradle at 25
Twenty-five years ago, a book proposed that waste could be food.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things returns in 2027. The landscape around climate, industry, finance, and materials has changed. The design assignment has become newly alive.
What might become possible if we return to first principles, not as positions to defend, but as questions to put to work?
If Cradle to Cradle opened a door in your work or your life, we would love to hear what became possible. Share your story.
Questions, not positions
- What if waste were a beginning?
- What if self-interest became material for shared design?
- What if industry began again with delight in what things can become?
Talks and conversations
Ideas spoken across decades
Lectures, interviews, and conversations about design, materials, cities, carbon, and what comes next.
Listen
The Monticello Dialogues
A series of conversations with William McDonough, recorded at Monticello and broadcast by New Dimensions Radio, exploring design, democracy, and what it means to make things well.
Writings
The ideas in their original form
- 1992PrinciplesThe Hannover Principles: Design for SustainabilityNine principles for considering humanity, nature, responsibility, and continuous improvement in design.
- 1993AddressA Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of ThingsAn early statement of the ethical questions that would shape the work to come.
- 1998EssayThe NEXT Industrial RevolutionA proposal to move beyond doing less harm and redesign industry around abundance and renewal.Watch the film on Vimeo
- 2002BookCradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make ThingsA design framework in which materials become nutrients and waste becomes food.
- 2013BookThe Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability, Designing for AbundanceA practical invitation to move from minimizing harm toward creating positive benefit.
- 2016NatureCarbon Is Not the EnemyA language for carbon that asks whether it is living, durable, or fugitive, and whether it is in the right place.
Stories from the cradle
What did the book inspire for you?
A building, a product, a career, a way of seeing. If Cradle to Cradle opened a door in your professional or personal journey, we would love to hear what became possible. Share it in words, add photographs, or record a short video.
Different perspectives can reveal possibilities no one sees alone.
Enter the conversation
What could your perspective add to the conversation?
If these questions meet work you are already carrying, we invite you to talk with us. You can support the Institute directly through our Bloomerang giving page. If you are considering a grant, a planned gift, or another form of contribution and would like to talk it through, reach rpetersen@mcdonough.institute.