William McDonough

American architect and designer (born 1951), best known for co-authoring Cradle to Cradle and championing closed-loop material cycles — the principle that industrial products should be designed so that "waste equals food."

Introduced to closed-loop thinking growing up in Japan and Hong Kong, McDonough built the first solar-heated house in Ireland early in his career and went on to design landmark green buildings and industrial systems. His Cradle to Cradle framework reframes sustainability from minimizing harm toward designing materials and buildings that are regenerative by intent.

Role in Fuller's orbit

McDonough is a prominent contemporary heir to Fuller's design-science conviction that intelligent design can reconcile human production with planetary limits. His waste-equals-food, whole-cycle approach is a direct descendant of Fuller's ephemeralization — doing ever more with ever less — applied to materials and industry.

See Also

• Jason F. McLennan (Jason F. McLennan) — Living Building Challenge founder in the same regenerative-design movement
• David W. Orr (David W. Orr) — ecological-design educator in the same lineage

Sources

• William McDonough (source reference) — Zotero People collection (website)