Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems (SPM/MoD), submitted by an interdisciplinary team of students at MIT has been selected as the winner of the prestigious 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. The team will receive a $100,000 prize at a conferring ceremony on June 6th, 2009 at 2pm at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago followed by a reception and celebration featuring a presentation by design innovator Bruce Mau.
To learn more about the winner, the runner-up, and the honorable mentions visit: http://challenge.bfi.org
To read all the entries submitted to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, visit the Idea Index.
Wondering where breakthrough ideas addressing today's major crises are? Look no further, the entries to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge are now available for view in the Idea Index, an open-source database of solutions to the world's most pressing problems.
An annual $100,000 prize program to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems
The world financial system is in chaos; vital ecosystems are under stress; climate change and its consequences are daily news; and the bare essentials of human life - food, water, and shelter - remain out of reach for billions of people.
Challenges of this magnitude require bold, visionary strategies; they require what Buckminster Fuller called “a design revolution.” Great stand-alone solutions - pieces of a larger puzzle - are out there, but it will take more than an innovative gadget or isolated technological breakthrough to tackle the problems of a complex and interconnected world.
“We’re looking for comprehensive anticipatory design solutions that address multiple problems without creating new ones down the road - integrated strategies dealing with key social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues,” explains Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
As stated in this year’s call for entries, these design strategies “must present a bold, visionary, tangible initiative that is focused on a well-defined need of critical importance. They should be regionally specific yet globally applicable, and backed up by a solid plan and the capability to move the solution forward.”
We are pleased to announce the launch of the much-anticipated Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index, an interactive, searchable database of entries to the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
Dr. John Todd was awarded the first annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize at a conferring ceremony at the Center for Architecture in New York City on Monday, June 23rd.
Democracy Now!, a fantastic New York-based independent radio/TV news broadcast, caught up with Dr. Todd, Challenge juror Hunter Lovins, and Jaime Snyder to talk about Fuller's legacy, Dr. Todd's visionary work in Appalachia, and the foolish plans for a nuclear power revival in the United States.
Bucky had it right. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
That’s why we’re awarding a $100,000 prize each year for comprehensive solutions that radically advance human well-being and ecosystem health.
The 2009 Challenge begins this fall. Stay tuned...
If you would like to receive email updates about the 2009 Challenge, please send a request to challenge (at) bfi (dot) org with the word “subscribe” in the subject line.
“Dr. John Todd’s comprehensive design strategy to bring about a carbon neutral world, in the opinion of this jury, best embodies the bold, visionary approach to large scale societal transformation pioneered by Buckminster Fuller. Dr. Todd’s proposal sets forth a profound vision to heal the environmental and economic scars of the Appalachian region and a detailed strategy to build a dynamic sustainable economic basis for lasting renewal,” said the Buckminster Fuller Challenge jurors in a statement about their decision.
“Dr. Todd’s vision sets forth a new theory of ecological design weaving together a set of processes - from restoration of land to geo-sequestration of carbon, to community involvement, to long-term economic vitality - to create a blueprint for a future for Appalachia that envisions a harmonious self-sustaining community. This is one of the only true whole systems projects that is place based but widely applicable.” Click here to download the full statement from the jury [pdf].
Allegra Fuller Snyder, Fuller’s daughter, remarked, “My father identified himself as a Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist. Each word is essential to understanding in what way he felt an individual must be competent to be effective in fully implementing constructive visions for our collective planetary future. John Todd’s response meets that Challenge, literally and figuratively. My father, who knew, and admired, Dr. Todd’s work in the 1970s, would certainly agree.”
NOVEMBER 19th, 2007, NEW YORK CITY — The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) is delighted to announce the selection of the final two jurors for the first BUCKMINSTER FULLER CHALLENGE, an international design science challenge which seeks to confer a prize of $100,000 to a single winning solution.
JANINE BENYUS and HUNTER LOVINS will join the five distinguished members of the 2007/2008 Challenge jury introduced previously. The full panel of jurors for the 2007/2008 Challenge is as follows: JANINE BENYUS, celebrated natural sciences writer, innovation consultant and author of six books including The New York Times bestseller Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Co-Founder of The Biomimicry Institute; SIR NICHOLAS GRIMSHAW, renowned architect and President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London; HAZEL HENDERSON, futurist, author and consultant on sustainable human development and socially responsible business and investment; founder, Ethical Markets Media, llc; DANNY HILLIS visionary inventor, computer scientist, author, engineer; Chairman and CTO of Applied Minds, Inc., co-chairman of The Long Now Foundation; HUNTER LOVINS, President and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and co-author of nine books and hundreds of papers, including the 1999 bestseller Natural Capitalism; WILLIAM MCDONOUGH, sustainable design visionary, bestselling author, and founder of William McDonough + Partners, a leading architecture firm practicing cradle to cradle design; and VANDANA SHIVA, renowned physicist, author, and environmental activist, founder and Director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi.
Catalyzing the vanguard of a design science revolution
If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do ...
How would I be? What would I do?" — R. Buckminster Fuller
The Buckminster Fuller Institute has announced a call for entries to THE BUCKMINSTER FULLER CHALLENGE, an international design science competition which seeks to confer a prize of $100,000 to a single winning solution.
Prize monies will be awarded in June, 2008 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth's ecological integrity.
Catalyzing the vanguard of a design science revolution
On the occasion of Bucky's 112th birthday The Buckminster Fuller Institute announces the launch of the first annual BUCKMINSTER FULLER CHALLENGE. http://challenge.bfi.org
Established to catalyze the vanguard of a global design science revolution, the Challenge will offer a single $100,000 prize annually to support the development and implementation of a solution with significant potential to solve the world's most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth's ecological integrity.
Entries will be accepted beginning September 4th, 2007. The first prize will be conferred in June of 2008, timed to coincide with the opening of the first major retrospective exhibition of Buckminster Fuller's work in the US at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
After decades of tracking world resources, innovations in science and technology, and human needs, Fuller asserted that options exist to successfully surmount the crises of unprecedented scope and complexity facing humanity. He issued an urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge intends to further this urgent call.
