"The Hannover principles should be seen as a living document that is committed to transforming our understanding of our interdependent relationship with Nature.  In this way, the principles may adapt as our knowledge of the world evolves” Hannover Principles, 1992.

Hannover EXPO train, year 2000, Flickr, Creative Commons
Sustainability

Hannover Principles: Design for sustainabilty

The Hannover principles were originally created by William McDonough and Michael Braungart for EXPO 2000 in Hannover, Germany. Consisting of nine key tenants that designers and architects should follow, the principles reframe the fundamental concepts behind the issue of sustainability and stress our interdependent relationship with Nature. Notably, the principles have initiated the well known cradle-to-cradle concept that has recently received a lot of public attention.

Originally established to inform the international design competitors of Hannover's EXPO 2000 -”Humanity, Nature, and Technology," the Hannover Principles have come to be valued by nearly everyone involved in the built environment: designers, developers, architects, contractors, planners, government officials and even everyday building users. The goal of the principles was to help form the foundation of a new design philosophy that could guide the planning of future proposed construction projects throughout Hannover, its region, its global neighbours, and its partners in EXPO 2000.  Specifically, these nine principles elaborate the relationship between the environment, its natural processes and the many human inhabitants of the planet.

William McDonough and Michael Braungart originally established the principles and were among the first to philosophically address the fundamental concepts behind sustainability and the sustainable design of the built environment.  Recognizing our interdependence with nature, they proposed a new relationship of humans to it that includes a responsibility on the part of humans to protect it. Ideas such as this among many others resulted in the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Generally speaking, the book seeks to establish production techniques that go beyond mere improvements in efficiency and are instead essentially waste free. It stresses that the overall idea of sustainability is to generate products and buildings that either enter back into natural cycles after use or can be reborn as new objects that are usable to the next generation of humans.

Instead of entering into the heated discussion among people and institutions on various sides of the environmental debate, the Hannover Principles have simply invited individuals to consider the many benefits of alternative design strategies that happen to support the environment and make use of its processes. They have given a goal for humanity to work towards by urging people to go beyond mere efficiency improvements and instead envision the process of production as part of a cycle that moves from cradle to cradle. 

Comments

Sam Awsen

this is the most informed writing I’ve ever seen on this subject’s

Mon, 05/09/2011 - 13:44

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Quotes

"We must face the fact that what we are seeing across the world today is war, a war against life itself. Our present systems of design have created a world that grows far beyond the capacity of the environment to sustain life into the future.

The industrial idiom of design, failing to honor the principles of nature, can only violate them, producing waste and harm, regardless of purported intention.

If we destroy more forests, burn more garbage, drift-net more fish, burn more coal, bleach more paper, destroy more topsoil, poison more insects, build over more habitats, dam more rivers, produce more toxic and radioactive waste, we are creating a vast industrial machine, not for living in, but for dying in.
 

It is a war, to be sure, a war that only a few more generations can surely survive."
—William McDonough

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…the world’s major environmental problems will only be solved through new ways of conceptualizing and running our cities, and the way we lead our urban lives […]

For this purpose, the most important thing is the collection and dissemination of best practices to assure that people in cities worldwide actually are informed about existing projects. That would be an indication that cities were becoming smart in the best sense of the world.

Herbert Girardet
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