Throughout the past six months BFI volunteers have worked to redesign our office space in Brooklyn, NY and install a BFI Study Center, open to the public. The center includes rare and out of print books, articles, magazines, photographs, posters, videos, and various artifacts by and about Buckminster Fuller’s life, work, and ideas.
The center also contains the installation of the Dymaxion Timeline, a curated collection of images from the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, and the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, M1090 R. Buckminster Fuller Collection. Organized by Bonnie DeVarco, Shoji Sadao and Beth Stryker, graphic design by Project Projects. The Timeline was presented previously at the Center for Architecture NY (2008) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009) in the context of the Dymaxion Study Center (curated by Beth Stryker, organized by the AIA New York Chapter and the Center for Architecture Foundation in association with the Buckminster Fuller Institute).
The BFI Study Center will be open to the public during set hours and by appointment following the official opening party:
February 3rd, 6-8 p.m.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
181 N 11th Street, #402
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Much thanks to Ben Loeffler and Stephen Martin for their help. Beverages for the opening provided by Brooklyn Brewery.
Many thousands of Haitian families are now without shelter. Loss of life and survivors’ injuries are at an unprecedented scale for this region. Our first initiative in concert with the SDA Hospital and others is a 1,500 square foot field hospital in a 44 foot diameter Pacific Dome with World Shelters U-Domes providing interior spaces. The field hospital will be located across the street from the existing SDA Hospital in Port au Prince, and will provide much-needed additional capacity to care for the overwhelming number of people injured in the earthquake.
Beyond the immediate imperative to provide medical care, food and water for survivors, assistance to Haiti must further the longer-term goals of rebuilding and recovery. Your support of World Shelters’ Haitian relief efforts will provide a maximum value in context-appropriate shelter that will help make the transition towards permanent housing “built back better” while contributing to local economic development in Haiti
BFI has been a long-time supporter of World Shelters and friend of Pacific Domes. For further information about how you can help please visit worldshelters.org or Pacific Domes.
Our year end fundraising drive is underway, and we need your support to help us end our year on budget. We encourage people to give at whatever level they can afford, but wish to emphasize the difference a donation as modest as $10 can make.
Read More and Donate Today.
 Buckminster Fuller believed that the world could be made to work for 100% of humanity. He dedicated his life to pursuing what humanity in general, and one person in particular, could do to achieve this goal. One for 100, the 2010 BFI Fellows’ blog, will bear witness to the fulfillment of Fuller's vision through the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a search for comprehensive solutions to the most pressing problems facing humankind.
 Each year a distinguished jury awards a $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Entries are now being accepted and the deadline is midnight, Eastern Time on October 30, 2009. Visit the Challenge site for full details.
Friday, September 18th 9am-7pm
Bedford Ave and N. 10th Street
Brooklyn, NY
Come join The Buckminster Fuller Institute on Friday, September 18th as we participate in Park(ing) Day 2009, an international event that reclaims parking spots and transforms them into engaging, people-friendly public spaces for one day a year. These small, temporary public spaces provide a breath of relief from the auto-clogged reality of New York City, and aim to spark dialogue about our valuable public space and how we choose to use it. Our BFI spot, entitled The Buckminster Fuller Park, will be open all day for anyone that wants to stop by for some geodesic building, Fuller conversing, and general relaxation. We will also be handing out free fold-up Dymaxion Globes! Hope to see you there!
See more photos from last year's BFI park here
September 11-13, 2009, Fordham University will host “Across the Generations: Legacies of Hope and Meaning”, an international conference sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics.
The three day conference features numerous keynote speakers, including a plenary talk by Dr. Michael Ben Eli of the Sustainability Laboratory, “The Cybernetics of Change, the Media and the Challenge of Sustainability” (Friday at 12:00 p.m.) and a panel session with BFI founder andf board member Jaime Snyder & BFI executive director Elizabeth Thompson, “Legacies of Hope and Meaning: Buckminster Fuller, Neil Postman, Alfred Korzybski and Marshall McLuhan” (Saturday at 11 a.m.).
Left to right: Andres Sevtsuk, Dimitris Papanikolaou, William Lark Jr., Arthur Petron, Michael Chia-Liang Lin, Charles Guan, Ryan Chin. (Photo by Cassandra Davis)
June 6th, 2009: The second annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize was awarded to MIT's Smart Cities group for their winning project 'Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility on Demand'. The team of seven students received the Omni-Oculi prize sculpture and a check for $100,000. The ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago included presentations by the winning team, the runner-up project 'Dreaming New Mexico', represented by Kenny Ausubel of the Bioneers, and a panel discussion with 2009 jurors Bill Browning and Edie Farwell moderated by Susan Szenasy of Metropolis Magazine.
Join us for a weekend of celebration in Chicago, IL June 6th - 7th!
Click here for event details to date
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.
April 2009, BFI was on site during the first annual Earth Expo at the Bronx Zoo with dozens of other organizations and companies, both local and international, to engage the public with issues of sustainability and conservation. Between distributing information about BFI and The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, we offered visitors a chance to get involved, physically, with Fuller's ideas through the construction of a newspaper geodesic dome.
Click here for more pictures from the event.
Launched in November 2008, BFI’s Prototype - a program bringing together local artists, designers & architects in the exploration of structure - meets monthly to engage in discussion, design and building new forms.
Prototype was commissioned to create structures for two recent events in New York City, click here to read more...
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