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"What I think is so exciting about Model U is
that it opens the door to a whole new way of looking
at things, just like the Model T did," says William
McDonough. "The vision behind Model U is entirely
positive. Instead of focusing on minimizing environmental
harm, which is what most approaches to sustainable
mobility do, Model U starts to find ways to be
recreational and regenerative—to have fun
and create environmental benefits at the same
time. That's a totally new vision for the auto
industry."
 MBDC
and William McDonough + Partners, McDonough's
architecture and community design firm, have been
working with Ford Motor Co. since 1999. William
McDonough + Partners led the master planning for
Ford's historic Rouge manufacturing facility in
Dearborn. MBDC has worked with various Ford groups,
researching materials recycling, potential eco-effective
materials for production vehicles, and supply
chain sustainability. The concepts McDonough and
Braungart have been developing together—such
as eco-leasing, intelligent materials pooling,
biological and technical nutrients and metabolisms—are
the kinds of insights that led Ford Motor Co.
Chairman, William Clay Ford, Jr., to tell green@work
two years ago ("What's In a Name?,"
January/February 2000) that McDonough was "one
of the most profound environmental thinkers in
the world."
With this experience working together, when Ford
asked William McDonough and Michael Braungart
to be part of the team designing the Model U,
"we were thrilled," says McDonough. "The opportunity
to apply MBDC's ideas to a concept car after working
in research programs and at facilities at Ford
is very exciting."
The Design Team
The Model U was built around design concepts
from Ford's Brand Imaging Group in Irvine, California,
and technologies and environmental materials developed
in Ford Research Laboratory. MBDC's addition to
the design team gave the impetus for a reevaluation
of the aspirations for the car, especially its
environmental vision. The positive, hopeful vision
that McDonough and Braungart have been spreading
for years found fertile ground in the Model U.
At the core of MBDC's vision for sustainable
design is a fundamental shift from the 'eco-efficient'
strategy of merely reducing industry's environmental
harm, to pursuing positive environmental effects
through intelligent design—an 'eco-effective'
strategy. Eco-effective design pursues these positive
aspirations by selecting the safest chemicals
and materials available, and treating them as
nutrients in healthy metabolisms—the biological
metabolism of ecosystems, and the technical metabolism
of industry—circulating in cradle-to-cradle
life cycles. Within this framework, a vehicle—its
production, use, and recycling-can be designed
to support nature's living systems, rather than
being an environmental burden.
 MBDC
helped place the Model U's environmental features
and materials into an eco-effective framework,
identifying a positive, regenerative vision of
what they wanted to accomplish in the long run,
and then articulating the ways the Model U begins
to move in that direction. In much the same way
McDonough and Braungart have helped shape the
conversation surrounding sustainable development,
MBDC brought that frame of reference to the vision
for the Model U.
Taking a Cradle-to-Cradle Perspective
With this new perspective, as the design team
looked at the environmentally minded materials
on the concept car with the cradle-to-cradle lens,
identifying materials that were designed to reduce
environmental impact, and considering them in
the context of transitions to eco-effective materials.
Other materials on the car had the potential to
circulate in regenerative, cradle-to-cradle life
cycles. The identification of two key example
materials highlighted the potential to design
cars for healthy, cradle-to-cradle life cycles.
 Model
U's upholstery is made from a polyester 'technical
nutrient' fabric from Milliken Automotive that
is market-ready. This material, which Milliken
and Co. and MBDC developed together, was designed
from ingredients selected for their positive human
and environmental health characteristics, as well
as top performance requirements.
In addition to the Milliken fabric, the Model
U included textile made from a corn-derived biopolymer
called PLA (polylactide), developed by Cargill
Dow. PLA is a potential 'biological nutrient'
that can be returned safely to the soil after
use, to feed the agricultural processes from which
it's derived.
By identifying a potential 'biological nutrient'
and a 'technical nutrient' among the materials
on the Model U, the team had an anchor for a wholly
positive environmental vision. Instead of aiming
only to minimize the environmental harm of the
car's materials (an important and necessary goal),
the Model U begins to use materials that are positive-safe
for the environment and perpetually recyclable
or compostable, never becoming waste. "Waste equals
food is such a key principle for environmentally
intelligent materials," says Braungart. "The Model
U is just a first step toward identifying palettes
of positive materials for designing and manufacturing
cars, and eliminating the concept of waste."
Possibilities
The possibilities the Model U signals are what
get McDonough and Braungart most excited.
"From this start, a clear, long-term vision can
emerge as these ideas are more thoroughly developed
across the automotive industry," says McDonough.
"It's a vision for cars that are made entirely
of materials with positive human and environmental
impacts; biological and technical nutrients made
and assembled so they can be separated when the
car is disassembled, and returned to the soil
or to industry; polymers and metals recovered
and recycled at the same level of quality or better,
for reuse in generation after generation of vehicles;
engines running on energy that's derived from
the sun, and producing no pollution. Driving your
car can be a positive event on all counts."
For more information on the Model U concept car,
see the MBDC
press release and the Ford
Motor Company press release.
This feature was adapted from the article "The
Model T for a New Era," Green@Work
magazine, January/February 2003.
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