William McDonough

McDonough is the American architect who is one of the co-authors of the book. He grows up in Japan, where there is much beauty as well as intelligent design and utilization of scarce resources. Attending college, he assists a professor in designing homes for the Bedouin in the Jordan River valley. This is Bill's first strong sense of how good design can be simple, elegant, and well-suited to locale. Bill goes to graduate school to become an architect, and he notices that energy efficiency, embodied by insulation and other typical practices, are the only environmental issues addressed in designing buildings. He learns that many of the passive approaches suggested by colleagues and professors are already in use in appropriate environments, such as rock masses in building Irish houses. He apprentices with a New York firm devoted to socially responsible housing. At this time, Bill investigates indoor air...