Hawken and McDonough

This is a little reflection after I watched Hawken and McDonough's book and TED talk. First of all, both of them are professionals on their topics. And in the end, there are a lot of informations which I cannot absorb in just a few days. But I will present my views and some of the connections they have in this blog.

First, both of them are talking about the scarcity of resources. Even though they are on the same topic, the way they present their idea is totally different. Ignoring the fact that one of them wrote a book, and the other just had a speech, their content are quite different. Hawken is more...realistic. He pointed out the fact that no matter how much we save in our daily life, is it still not enough. Unless the corporations started working for the environment, there will never be a sustainable life. McDonough, in the other hand is more optimistic, and unreal in a way. He gave his audience "Hope". He educates us ways to save energy. For example, he talked about the green roof, which is something I'm highly interested in. He suggested the idea of planting vegetables on our roof, and from doing that, we are also giving our house one of the best installation ever. The topic of green roof really fascinates me. Since the beginning of last year, I started researching on green roof, and found many interesting facts on it. However, I don’t want to digress this topic, so I am not going to talk about my research on green roof.

Hawken also talked about something that I thought is very…interesting. He talked about how we should redesign some of the systems in our everyday life. By that, I mean hospital system. He said, during the process of going to the hospital, getting medicine…etc are using much more resources then we needed. I strongly agree with him. For example, I feel that all the paper advertisements are a form of waste resources. Why are we still reading paper advertisements when we have internet? Is it necessary to cut down that many acres of forest? Do you even read those advertisements? I guess it is very clear to you now; some of the “system” in our world is not really resource efficient.

I want to end my blog by one of the quote from Hawken. Sustainable businesses create objects of durability and long-term utility whose ultimate use or disposition will not be harmful to future generations. This will be my rule when I made it to the architecture business. I want to contribute to the world, do you?

Waste Not! Senior Projec!

After reading the 3rd chapter of the book “Natural Capitalism”, Waste Not, I feel the urge to tell you more about my passion in green architecture. This will later lead to my senior project and possibly my future job, but before that, let me first talk about this chapter.

Waste Not is basically a whole chapter talking about waste. It started with shocking facts about the amount of waste that is produced by Americans each year. After these shocking, disturbing and distasteful facts, the focus of the chapter slowly moved toward the economy side. It reminded me about my last year’s global environmental issue class. This class is also talking about waste and ecological footprints. I found out that the tremendous waste from any production can be reduced dramatically if the parts of the product is made locally. Without all the pollutions during the process of conveying the products, our earth will surely be a greener place. But for profit, companies decided to exploit this earth. In other words, these peoples are all capitalists. Extreme selfish capitalist.

Unexpectedly, this chapter started talked about the waste of “people”, which I thought was interesting. It talks about how many labors are wasting their talent just because they don’t have opportunities. It mentioned about drugs and other more complicated issues, but I think that will be digressive if the main point of this blog is the connection to my Senior project.

So! Senior project! First of all, I always get excited when I talk about this, so excuse me for adding too much exclamation marks! Well, even though I still don’t have a clear idea of what my senior project is going to be, I know it is going to be about Green architecture. And after a trip to the Lille forum, I’ve learned about how wasteful, and harmful a building can be. This is similar to what the chapter is about, the waste! Also, the combination of the shocking facts I found during my trip to France made me more aware of the production of buildings. It also made me more devoted into the study of green architecture. So, What is my senior project going to be? Green architecture and the design of a more sustainable life~!