UPCYCLING 

We reckon that everyone – not just Architects - would benefit from exposure to a couple of books which at first glance might seem completely unrelated.

The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance
This is the latest book from Architect William McDonough and Chemist Michael Baungart and is a follow on from their earlier ground breaking publication Cradle to Cradle.
Some interesting soundbites:

• Resource scarcity and sustainability are questions of design
• Design as a tool for positive impact. Industry can do better than “no harm”: it can actively improve everything with which it comes into contact
•  The next time you want to use the word “waste,” bite your tongue. Worms consume food and, through the system of their bodies, produce richer nutrients. You, through the system of your intelligence, can create richer nutrients too.
• Doing less bad is not the same as doing more good

Here is a link to William McDonough’s website which goes into more detail on the concepts detailed in the book. http://www.mcdonough.com/speaking-writing/the-upcycle/#.VhXpiPnzpGE
There is an interesting real world example of upcycling at this address http://www.theupcycle.nl/ ​

The other publication worth reading is ,

Double Entry : how the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world – and how their invention could make or break the planet.
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'…The rise and metamorphosis of double-entry bookkeeping is one of history's best-kept secrets and most important untold tales . Through its logic we have let the planet go to ruin-and through its logic we now have a chance to avert that ruin…'
You might think it somewhat boring to read a history of how the accounting profession has evolved !  But this is a good and easy read by Australian Author Jane Gleeson-White.

The concluding chapter is where the connection between these two books can be seen: Gleeson-White postulates that the holy grail of national economies, GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT or GDP, measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile !  

When accountants are able to resolve values for elements of the natural world – those things that Economists refer to as “externalities” - we will have truly evolved into the twenty-first century’s industrial revolution.

To conclude this conversation piece we need to acknowledge an early environmental “design scientist” RICHARD BUCKMINSTER-FULLER who, in the mid-twentieth century had an equally sophisticated understanding of how to make this planet work.
 He coined phrases like 
 “spaceship earth” and “doing more with less”  - to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more.

In the 1950’s Fuller believed that human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy
His legacy continues: see more at http://bfi.org/