William McDonough's Tower of Tomorrow

This month's Fortune magazine is dedicated to industrial design of the future. William McDonough chose to feature a building design using technology available today. The prices on some features, he admits, are high at this point. But the tower uses a biomimicry type design in that he tries to mimic some of the features of a tree. It has solar panels that produces much of its own power; it has tree-filled terraces that recycle water; it contains plant-filled atriums that clean the air; and its roofs are designed to absorb, not reflect heat. There are other features as well, including using McDonough's "cradle-to-cradle" design, that aims to mimic nature in that all waste equals food. In this building's example, all products "are designed to return safely to the earth or to be reused."