William A. McDonough (b. 1951, Tokyo, Japan) is an American architect and founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, whose career is focused on designing environmentally sustainable buildings and transforming industrial manufacturing processes.
McDonough was born in Tokyo the son of an American Seagram's executive, and trained at Dartmouth College and Yale University. In 1981 McDonough founded his practice, and his first major commission was the 1984 Environmental Defense Fund Headquarters. According to a profile in Metropolis Magazine, the EDF told him he would be sued if any employees became sick from noxious elements in the construction material; when McDonough asked his suppliers to provide him with a list of chemicals in their products, he was told it was proprietary information.
A number of large corporate projects for The Gap, Nike, and Herman Miller, which focused on both a financial and environmental standpoint, led to his commission for a 20-year, US$2 billion environmental re-engineering of the Ford Motor Company's legendary River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The project included rolling out the world's largest extensive "living roof" in October 2002. The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing ground cover. fordRouge.asp" target="_blank">http://archrecord.construction.com/features/bwarAwards/archives/04b_fordRouge.asp
In 1996 McDonough became the first and only individual recipient of the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. In _1999 Time Magazine called him "Hero for the Planet". In 2002 he wrote (with Michael Braungart) "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things". In 2004 he received a National Design Award for environmental design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
McDonough's practice is currently located in Charlottesville, Virginia, with a small office in San Francisco, California. McDonough moved his practice from New York City to Charlottesville in 1994, when he was appointed as the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. He relinquished this position in 1999 to focus on expanding his professional practice.
