People tell me I need an assistant, but I dont want one.
Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,'
To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things-products, packaging, and systems-from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist.
And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it?
Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.
Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions.
Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle.
On one hand you want to see your subject well. On the other hand, you want to be caught off guard to retain the spontaneity. If you know your subject too well you stop seeing it.
What is life? The joy of the blessed, the sorrow of the sad, and a search for death. And what is death? An inevitable happening, an uncertain pilgrimage, the tears of the living, the thief of man.
Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.
Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy is called entangling.