A presentation by internationally renowned designer William McDonough was the highlight of the first annual Swinerton Green Building Summit held in late May at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove.

Many of the nation’s leading “green building” experts and visionaries discussed concepts such as building green, sustainable design, and mandates from the city and county of San Francisco. Discussions ranged from determining return on green investment to funding sources and initiatives to current research on improving building performance.

McDonough is one of the primary proponents of what he and his partners call “the next industrial revolution.” In 1999, Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” saying “his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world.” McDonough’s ideas and efforts were also honored when in 1996 he became the only individual to receive the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the nation's highest environmental honor.

McDonough spoke on “A Whole New World of Design,” where after 5,000 years of intense technological experimentation, “the human species has arrived at a point in its history when the tragic global implications of current modes of human activity are obvious; global warming, persistent toxification, endocrine disruptors and heavy metal contamination, to name but a few in the environmental category.”

He also presented a new design paradigm, “Cradle to Cradle,” which allows individuals, enterprises and institutions to produce human constructs which are immensely profitable, economically, ecologically and socially.

Presenters at the Summit included: William Browning of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Dr. Malcolm Lewis of CTG Energetics and the United States Green Building Council, Mark Palmer from the city and county of San Francisco, Daniel Burgoyne from the office of the state of California, Doug Seiter from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Rob Jernigan of Gensler Architects, Kevin Burke of William McDonough + Partners, David Lehrer from the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley, Dan Ray of GMAC, Barry Steinberg of Kutak Rock, Dr. Jorge Vanegas from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Paul Murray from Herman Miller and Dr. Alisdair McGregor from ARUP Engineering.

Expanded biographies on all of the speakers along with a full agenda of the Green Building Summit program are available upon request by calling Mark Gudenas at Swinerton Builders: (415) 617-1414.