Purposive Drift

Cherry trees & design

William McDonough is my kind of designer. Any designer who answers the question, "Where do you most like being? " by replying, "I like being on my back with my child on my stomach - in the woods, in the city, wherever. So long as we're both laughing." is likely to get my vote. All the more so when earlier in the interview he says:

"We need to have fun to be effective. Eco-efficiency, where you try to reduce everything to zero, is not much fun. And nature itself is not that efficient. It's effective. Take a cherry tree in the spring. It's not efficient - how many blossoms does it need to regenerate? But it is effective: it makes cherries. We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency, but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem. We can celebrate abundance where it is ecologically intelligent."

I have come across William McDonough before, but up until now I didn't take him seriously. Now after reading this interview in the New Scientist I think I may have to think again.