The First 9 Jurors for the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Announced
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is please to announce the first 9 jurors for the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, 'socially responsible design's highest award'. Each year systems thinkers and design pioneers across a wide spectrum of human endeavor are invited from around the world to unanimously select the winner and award $100k to a project that seeks to solve some of humanity's most entrenched global problems.
The first 9 jurors for 2012 are:
KENNY AUSUBAL AND NINA SIMON, co-founders of Bioneers and Seeds of Change, writers, award-winning social entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the restoration of Earth's ecosystems;
DR. LOLA DARE, Leading expert in global health issues;
SAUL GRIFFITH, Globally recognized designer, inventor, writer, educator and entrepreneur;
ALASADAIR HARRIS, Project leader for the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge winning solution and leading expert in sustainable strategies for coastal ecologies;
HELEN AND NEWTON HARRISON, leading pioneers in the eco-art movement;
JOHN FULLERTON, Thought leader at the intersection of sustainability, social justice and finance;
ALICE RAWSTHORN, Internationally renowned design critic for the International Harald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times.
"The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Prize is a landmark project that has helped not only identify some of the truly luminous, game-changing ecological design initiatives on the planet, it has further helped build a serious ongoing database featuring a wealth of design breakthroughs, and has put whole-systems design on the public map in a much bigger way. Nina and I are unspeakably honored to be invited as jurors, and I’m really looking forward to immersing in this year’s living treasure of visionary entrants." expressed Kenny Ausubal, co-founder of Bioneers.
The review process by BFI's internal team has already begun . Solutions address such wide-ranging problems as water scarcity, sustainable urban design, and micro-grant programs in less developed nations. What sets this initiative apart from all others is that these entries are working towards a holistic, whole systems approach to solving some of our most entrenched global problems.
2010 juror and internationally renowned design pioneer, John Thackara explains, "No other public design competition that I know comes even close to being this demanding for applicants, nor so thoroughly managed. The Challenge is a long way from the business as usual of mainstream design and its frothy competitions."
Ideas came from all parts of the world, the Sahel, the Arctic, and from nations such as India, South Africa, Rwanda, Barbados, Haiti, Spain, Afghanistan, The Netherlands, Taiwan, and China. Several student projects were also entered from ETH Zürich/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Universidad del PaAs Vasco, and GAIA University, among others.
It is anticipated that an additional 3 jurors will be added by February 2012. The jury will receive up to 20 projects for final comparative review and select the solution that best meets the criteria. Semi-Finalists will be announced in March 2012, Finalists will be announced in May 2012 and the winner will be revealed at a ceremony in June 2012.
BIOS 2012 JURY
KENNY AUSUBAL AND NINA SIMON (serving as a team)- Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simon founded the Bioneers conference and organization in 1990. Kenny Co-CEO is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He also co-founded the national company Seeds of Change. He produced several documentary films and has written three books. Kenny founded the Bioneers Dreaming New Mexico project to reconcile natural systems with human organization to build resilience at the state level, which was respectively named First Runner-Up and later Semi-Finalist in the BFI Challenge Prize.
Nina Simon is a social entrepreneur her life and work are informed by her passion for women’s leadership, systems thinking, the natural world and the arts’ capacity to shape culture and shift consciousness. Throughout her career in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Nina has pioneered innovative social marketing strategies for successful ventures that have worked to advance social and environmental change. Previously, she served as president of Seeds of Change and as director of strategic marketing for Odwalla. In 2006, in collaboration with Toby Herzlich, Nina began offering Cultivating Women’s Leadership, a transformative five-day intensive for diverse women with the passion and capacity to effect progressive change in their communities. She is the editor, with Anneke Campbell, of Moonrise, The Power of Women Leading from the Heart.
Dr. Lola Dare- Dr. Lola Dare is a founding member of the African Council for Sustainable Health Development (ACOSHED), a unique partnership between governments, civil society and development partners. ACOSHED's mission is to advocate for, and support African Governments, their partners, and communities on the reforms required for the establishment of sustainable, viable and responsive health systems as a vehicle for the delivery of the benefits of targeted interventions to improve health and development in Africa. She is also chief executive officer for the Center for Health Sciences Training and Research and Development (CHESTRAD), and has been involved in research design, implementation and evaluation in the field of reproductive health, with a focus on the status and well being of young persons and women in poor resource settings.She is a member of many local and international professional and development organizations including the Nigerian Medical Association, American Public Health Association, International AIDS Society and Institute of Directors.
SAUL GRIFFITH- Dr. Saul Griffith has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT. He is the co-founder of numerous companies including: Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, Instructables.com, HowToons and Makani Power. Saul has been awarded numerous awards for invention including the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Collegiate Inventor's award, and the Lemelson-MIT Student prize. A large focus of Saul's research efforts are in minimum and constrained energy surfaces for novel manufacturing techniques and other applications. He holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production. He co-authors children's comic books called “HowToons” about building your own science and engineering gadgets with Nick Dragotta and Joost Bonsen. Saul is a technical advisor to Make magazine and Popular Mechanics and is a columnist and contributor to Make and Craft magazines.
saulgriffith.com
JOHN FULLERTON- John Fullerton, Founder and President, leads all activities of the Capital Institute. Since the formal launch of Capital Institute in 2010, John has established himself as a thought leader in the "new economy" space, on financial reform, and as a leading practitioner of "impact investing." He writes a weekly blog, "The Future of Finance," at Capital Institute, and speaks regularly on the intersection of sustainability, social justice, and finance. John is also the principal of Level 3 Capital Advisors, LLC, an investment firm focused on high impact sustainable private investments.
During his 18-year career at JP Morgan ending in 2001, John managed multiple capital markets and derivatives businesses around the globe, and subsequently ran the venture investment activity of LabMorgan as Chief Investment Officer. He was JPMorgan’s representative on the Long Term Capital Oversight Committee in 1997-98. John is currently a director of Grasslands, LLC, New Day Farms, Inc., the New Economics Institute, and an Advisor to Natural Systems Utilities. He was a participant of the UNEP Green Economy Report. John's impact investment activity with Level 3 Capital Advisors brings a unique “theory and practice” experience that helps informs his work at Capital Institute. Read more about Level 3 here.
ALASADAIR HARRIS- Alasdair Harris is Founder of Blue Ventures, the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge winner. Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Their highly acclaimed integrated conservation programmes work with some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of Blue Ventures’ work help propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere.
Al has spent much of the past decade working on marine conservation issues in the Indian Ocean, and established Blue Ventures' first coral reef initiative in the region in 2003. He is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, recipient of the 2010 IUCN World Conservation Union's Young Conservationist Award, winner of the 2009 Condé Nast Environment Award, an Ashoka Fellow, and an ambassador of Australia's penguins. Currently based in Madagascar, his work developing sustainable business approaches for financing conservation has twice been commended by the UK government in the 'Enterprising Young Brits' awards.
HELEN AND NEWTON HARRISON (serving as a team)- Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (often referred to simply as “the Harrisons”) have worked for almost forty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, engineers and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development. They are historians, diplomats, ecologists, investigators, emissaries and art activists. Their work involves proposing solutions and involves not only public discussion, but extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals first in an art context and thereafter in the public realm.
Past projects have focused on watershed restoration(Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley), urban renewal (Baltimore), agriculture and forestry issues (the Pacific Northwest Fog Forest) among others. The Harrisons’ visionary projects have often led to changes in governmental policy and have expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations in parts of Europe (The Green Heart of Holland) and the United States (Sierra Nevada).
Harrison Studio
ALICE RAWSTHORN- Alice Rawsthorn is the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. Her weekly Design column – published every Monday – is syndicated to other media worldwide. Alice speaks on design and visual culture at important international events, including the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She is also a trustee of Arts Council England and the Whitechapel Gallery in London.
alicerawsthorn.com