File under: dubious accomplishments

Posted by David Roberts at 9:32 AM on 20 May 2007

Read more about: Bill McDonough | placemaking | green building

New York Times Magazine manages the somewhat astounding feat of conducting a thoroughly boring interview with Bill McDonough, one of the most interesting people on the planet.

For story: File under: dubious accomplishments
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"boring"

Well, the NYTimes Magazine is mostly pretty boring. And Deborah Solomon is a remarkably annoying interviewer.

But at least for those of us who are ill-educated and had never heard of Bill McDonough, the interview brought out a few bits of not at all boring information.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:00 AM on 20 May 2007

Bored By Victoria's?

Well, the NYTimes Magazine is mostly pretty boring.

The lingerie ads were pretty good...that and the crossword puzzle.

The rest is a lot of gas.

by jabailo at 11:10 AM on 20 May 2007
[ Parent ]

So goes the Times

Bill seemed put off by the reporter's rather "basic" approach. If so, I don't blame him. In the old days one would expect more of a Times reporter.

I'd agree with David that Bill is one of the more interesting people on the planet, but he does have similar limitations in his thinking as Amory Lovins, e.g., that sustainability is a "design" problem.

Yes and no. It is also a fundamentally political problem.

Consultants seem to be much more successful in the corporate world when they can present a schemata that clearly separates politics from design, but pushed too far this can be devil's bargain.

by Steven T at 8:44 PM on 20 May 2007

For Canis...

And for anyone else who is not familiar with McDonough's work and philosophy, this is sort of the definitive Bill McDonough presentation:

It's from Bioneers in 2000, so the work references are a bit dated, but the presentation of his design philosophy is solid.

by GreenEngineer at 12:35 PM on 21 May 2007

Grrr

For some reason, the embedded Youtube isn't coming through. Here's a link instead.

by GreenEngineer at 12:35 PM on 21 May 2007

Sustainability as a design problem

In response to Steven T: I don't think that McDonough believes that sustainability is purely a design problem. He acknowledges at various points the need for regulation and government involvement, if only to provide the necessary incentives to good design. But he focuses on design, because he's a designer, not a politician.

by GreenEngineer at 12:37 PM on 21 May 2007

Here's the video:

grist.org

by David Roberts at 12:46 PM on 21 May 2007

intelligence vs. stuff

Thanks, GreenEngineer. That was a very well spent, very educational 45 minutes.

One thing I learned is that the greatest male Celt who ever lived is neither James Joyce nor Tom Jones.

How this guy became "dean," or whatever, of the University of Virginia, while planning sedition and revolution, is not easy to understand ...

And by the way, on the subject of the Founding Fathers, did Benjamin Franklin really "speak Mohawk"?!

Anyway, clearly BMcD is brilliant, and remarkably entertaining. And I understand now DR's judgment of the NYTimes Mag's interview as "thoroughly boring." Seeing BMcD doing his act just confirms my feeling about Deborah Solomon's nauseating narcissism.

BMcD sure knows his way around PowerPoint, doesn't he. And I love the cute graph with "stuff" on the horizontal axis and "intelligence" on the vertical, and the arrow looping back as it rises.

But I am not sure I understand what he means by "spirit," and what he means by "relationships between spirit and matter." Obviously, he has a great respect for Native American wisdom. And his statement, early on, regarding our responsibility to "children of all species" is about as ethically enlightened as you can get. I wish he had talked more about those things.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:47 PM on 21 May 2007

spirit and matter

To me, the meaning of "respecting the relationship between spirit and matter" is a matter of acknowledging Einstein's dictum that "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Spiritual matters are hard for designers to grapple with, and in our techno-reductionist perspective, we are often tempted to dismiss those things we we know on some level are important but cannot easily fit into our preferred framework for knowledge. McDonough is saying, basically: Don't do that.

by GreenEngineer at 3:46 PM on 21 May 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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