Lectures are cool

This morning I went to a lecture given by William McDonough, author of Cradle to Cradle at the Copenhagen Architecture School.  He's got a bad case of monotone and he wears a bowtie, which made his opening line "we live in a time of glorious abundance" kind of comical (think Reverand Lovejoy on the Simpsons), but nevertheless it was a very compelling lecture, I thought.  I really like his idea about basing technological and urban systems on nature.  Some of my favorite phrases were: 

"design is intention"

"efficiency in a bad thing is dangerous"

"being less bad is not being good"

"buildings like trees, cities like forests"

"asphalt, just two words assigning blame"

"monoculture of agriculture"

"leave behind habitat, not cement"

I'm telling you, it was a really good lecture! Because I never take notes during those things normally.  And he showed this really cool map of global wind currents.  Just the image is so inspiring.  I'm going to start going to more lectures at RISD if this is what lectures are like.