Good growth.
William McDonough likely knew some of the about 300 people who entered the Varsity Theatre Monday night would consider that phrase an oxymoron. But by the time growth-wary attendees left, they probably did so with a little softer take on campus development, plus plenty of food for thought and a few laughs behind them, courtesy of the congenial McDonough.
Sporting bow tie and blazer, the "eco-effective expert" helped UC Davis move solidly into its second year of the three-year Long Range Development Planning process by presenting the community forum "Celebrating Nature’s Abundance."
The LRDP process will help the campus keep pace with projected enrollment numbers and will determine land-use projects – including offices, academic facilities and housing – to the year 2015. Its challenge is "to build a community that is healthier and more productive than those we’ve become accustomed to," said Assistant Vice Chancel-lor for Campus Planning Bob Segar.
That challenge echoes a goal voiced last month during the Fall Convocation by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef – "to get better as well as bigger," he said.
McDonough, together with MIG Associates of Berkeley, will assist the campus with the long range development plan during the next year. Monday’s forum provided the framework for hands-on community planning workshops set for the following two days and beyond.
The talk wove together ecology, ideology, philosophy and history, presenting more questions than answers. Not a single map of the campus or potential building elevation was mentioned. Instead, McDonough asked for audience members to start conceptualizing "good growth," stirring their imaginations with various "what if?" questions.
What if, he said, growth in communities could be viewed as positively as a child growing or a tree growing? "It requires a paradox shift, because growth is always being associated with bad," McDonough said.
"Wouldn’t it be nice if things came into the world and, instead of destroying it, they made it a better place," he said.
McDonough is a recipient of the nation’s highest environmental honor, the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. His firm, William McDonough + Partners, Architecture and Community Design, of Charlottesville, Va., has made buildings that create oxygen, like their grass-roofed Gap factory in San Bruno, and complexes at Oberlin College in Ohio that produce more energy than they need to operate –- "designs that take advantage of 100 percent natural lighting, solar heating and 100 percent easy access to fresh air," he said.
He has helped Ford Motor Co. design cars fabricated from almost entirely recyclable materials. "So they’re cars that become cars, that become cars, that become cars," McDonough said. "What if you had positive-emission vehicles? Imagine that," he said. Not surprisingly, McDonough’s working on that, too.
Channels of water meander through his residential and commercial complexes, allowing environmental processes to sanitize effluents and making the water cleaner as it leaves a community than when it entered – without the use of harmful chemicals.
McDonough also helped design natural, pollutant-free fabrics that degrade readily so that excess scraps can be used as plant food for strawberries grown near the textile factory.
He worked in Germany to design shower gels that won’t contaminate water. And he has built solar housing in Ireland. "Which should give you an idea of my ambition, since there’s no sun in Ireland."
Good design, he said, must: accept responsibilities for its consequences, respect the relationship between spirit and matter, create safe products with long-term value, eliminate the concept of waste, rely on natural energy flows, and understand its own limitations.
McDonough also spoke about the importance of balancing economy, equity and ecology – posing questions like: Is the project fundamentally viable? Have we created a safe and healthy place for the community? And are we effective with resources?"
"How do we love all children of all species of all time? It’s a fundamental question of human rights," McDonough said.
The last industrial revolution brought the world the three design criteria of cost, performance and aesthetics. The next revolution, McDonough said, will add to these criteria ecological intelligence, fairness and fun – concepts he likened to Thomas Jefferson’s "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
It’s time for people to see the natural world not as something they have dominion over or simply have stewardship of, he said. "The time has come to ask when do we find ourselves in kinship with nature?"
Design processes should involve much debate, he said, again referencing Jefferson. In addition to designing the house McDonough now lives in and laying forth the concepts of natural laws and inalienable rights in The Declaration of Independence, Jefferson also founded the University of Virginia with the expectation that "education requires the clash of ideas," McDonough said.
The process also requires humility, he said, noting that, as designers, humankind has plenty of reasons to be humble. "When you think that it took 5,000 years for us to put wheels on luggage, you realize we’re not that smart."
Though certainly humanistic, the forum stopped short of outlining particulars. Davis Councilwoman Sue Greenwald questioned how the campus’s new residential, academic and work spaces would foster community among people – "so we can maintain our social and political identities as a town."
Figuring that out is exactly the goal of this stage of the LRDP, McDonough said. "You are all now executives because you are going to make the decisions about where you want to go," he said. "Leaders must become designers, and designers must become leaders."