June 10, 2006
At 2:15 pm, I was warned by Phil Simon that Bill McDonough
was having “Powerpoint problems.” I had arrived in time for an interview with
the leading light of architectural sustainability, but found him deeply
enmeshed in a computer horror, an hour from presentation time and having to
literally reconstruct his talk, which had vanished. After much agida, he
managed to pull it together, literally carrying the laptop into the auditorium
while still running, afraid that the machine might freeze, leaving us all
without a visual image.
I needn’t have worried. After introducing him, I settled
back to watch him, in a considered, yet urgent call, lead us through the
planetary predicament, some of which we are complicit with. His view of
architecture’s role in the global order struck a nerve with me and with the
audience, particularly his use of a word I employ myself—one many architects
fail to recognize—humility. In his cosmology, that term reflects an appropriate
response to our place in the larger natural world, suggesting caution on our
part that we do no harm but enrich the places we create. Too few of us share
his vision, but more are catching on every day.
After the lights went up, I let out an inward sigh of
relief, signifying the wrap-up of another year’s AIA convention. Call it a
success by any measure.
Robert Ivy, FAIA
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