I believe that Buckminster Fuller's idea of the Trim tab is critical to understanding current stagnation of politics in Washington.

The small changes that would lead to big socially beneficial changes in Policy are not made because political people are busy making the small changes which will lead to bigger changes that are benificial to specific interests which they foster.
I am saying that unless the trim tab principal is openly discussed in government, vested interests will continue to employ it for narrow interests only.
A corrolary of this is that the public sector does have a special power which can be used to obtain leverage over social issues thru the leverage of the trim tab applied to the social rudder of a new policy applied to society..

Just a note that I added PDF versions of all of the remaining World Design Science Decade Documents today. The new additions were scanned and compiled by BFI Board Member Joseph Clinton.

The documents, about 200 mb in total size can be accessed as PDFs from the World Design Science Decade Documents page.

The Centre for Design promotes environmental sustainability through a directed program of research, consulting, professional development and knowledge sharing.

The Centre is recognised internationally as a leader in the development of design methods and tools that support sustainable product design. Our programs focus on sustainability and eco-efficiency as a source of innovation and responsible business development.

The Centre has access to extensive national and international networks including research centres, companies and institutions that enable the development of best practice products, buildings, services and policies.. This also keeps us informed of current policies and regulations, and the latest trends in sustainable design and innovation across all major sectors.

The Centre for Design has a strong multidisciplinary research team and access to specialist expertise and resources from within RMIT University. Collaborative projects are undertaken with industry, government and community stakeholders to develop pragmatic solutions.

The Centre for Design is based in the Faculty of the Constructed Environment at RMIT's city campus in Melbourne. RMIT is one of Australia's largest and most respected technical and design universities.

» Click here to find out more

From Lorne Young | Upper Canada College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, email | 416-488-1125 ext 3411

Content: Throughout this three-week (110 hour) integrated curriculum unit for grades 7-9 (adaptable to higher or lower grades) several general principles are emphasized and employed to maximize the benefits of an integrated unit. The systems approach, whole systems thinking and the underlying principle of synergy are the central, core concepts that all of the curricular areas will revolve around.

The following scenario is presented to the class:

The Synergetic Organization for Sustainability on Earth (SOS Earth) is recruiting/advertising for 4 individuals to make up a Research Team that will be spending 5 years on an uninhabited, ecologically sensitive island off the coast of British Columbia. The goal of this team is to be a model for the rest of the planet and to demonstrate that it is possible to live sustainably with the environment, without degrading it, for an extended period of time while doing important research on endangered species. The team must accomplish the following:

• Design a research station where the 4 team members will be able to live sustainably and self-sufficiently for the 5-year term
• Design an energy production system that will provide sufficient energy for the station
• Design a food and water production system for the 5 years
• Design a waste and recycling system
• All of this within the climatic and geographical limits of the island
• The design of the station and its components should be constructed to a realistic scale, ie research into the requirements and appropriate size of the various components is necessary

» Click here to find out more details

"I've had a long-time fascination with shelter systems. Specifically, I like to try and figure out ways to help people live happier, safer, warmer, more comfortable lives, and at higher standards than they are used to. Towards this end, I'm designing what is called an autonomous house."

"An autonomous house is a shelter system that provides for all of its occupants' needs, while remaining independent of many of the umbilical cords that are commonly connected to homes. By these, I mean electrical lines, phone lines, water lines, sewer lines, and roads. These things root a house down to one place, and when one of the systems fails (such as a tree falling on a power line someplace), the occupants suffer, because their shelter is dependent on those umbilicals."

"I'm designing and integrating systems that will allow a house to be free of these outside dependencies. Even, ultimately, to be moved around at the whim of the owners, very much like the freedom that boat and mobile home owners currently enjoy."

» Click here to see Patrick's website

From: WorldChanging | Dec. 20, 2005 | by Jamais Cascio



Universal access to clean water is one of the fundamental Millennium Development Goals, and inventors have come up with a variety of solutions for making non-potable water clean and drinkable. Some are shiny and high-tech, and others are terrifically simple. One of the easiest tools for making brackish or sea water usable requires little more than sunlight and time -- the Watercone.

Made of a rugged, transparent plastic, the Watercone is incredibly easy to use: fill up the base plate with salt water, place the cone over the plate, and wait. 24 hours later, a trough around the edge of the cone will contain 1-1.5 liters of fresh water, produced by evaporation/condensation. Pour the water out, and start again. Individual units are expected to cost around $50 apiece, although that will depend in large part on who manufactures them.

And that's the big problem. The inventor of the Watercone, industrial designer Stephan Augustin, is having trouble finding someone to make it. This is a bit surprising, as the Watercone has won numerous design awards over the past three years, has passed preliminary tests by CARE Germany, and is currently featured in the SAFE: Design Takes On Risk exhibit at the NY Museum of Modern Art. Apparently, previous licensing agreements have fallen through, and Augustin is once again looking for a manufacturer to bring the Watercone to the people who need it.

Read the interesting dialogue on WorldChanging about costs and feasibility of bringing this innovation to commercial scale.

Mass Deployment Refugee Housing by Alice B. Phillips and Jeffrey Warren of vestaldesign.com

from Vestal Design:

The SHRIMP (Sustainable Housing for Refugees via Mass Production) is an attempt to bring housing and other relief to large displaced or homeless populations, especially those who have suffered in a natural disaster. Providing shelter to a family of four, it folds up into 1/4 of a shipping container for efficient deployment.



Massive Deployment
Taking cues from IKEA's flat-packing furniture, this shelter starts its life as a 10' x 9.5' x 8' box, or exactly 1/4 of a "hi-cube" shipping container. Because of this standard size and self-contained design, the SHRIMP can be dispatched in extreme quantity; Maersk container ships, for example, can hold 6,400 containers. That equates to housing for roughly 100,000 people, on a single ship. Need medical or administrative centers, or even schools? Every 100th or 1000th SHRIMP can be a specialized unit, creating a complete mobile community. And using the solar distillery on the SHRIMP's roof, fresh water needs are significantly reduced.




Pack It Up

The SHRIMP has pontoons which automatically inflate, using compressed air canisters - assembly takes minutes, not hours. Because many container ships have cranes, this eliminates the need for docking infrastructure - units can be unloaded anywhere there's water. As standard-sized shipping containers, the SHRIMP can also easily be trucked across land. In addition, the simple wooden interior is modifiable with tools available in most places, allowing units to be customized or even converted into more permanent homes.




Sustainable Living
SHRIMP units can be refitted for reuse, and use sustainably farmed wood (see Forest Stewardship Council). They can also be retrofitted out of shipping containers, which are piling up in the US: "It costs $2,000 to ship an empty container back to its source, he said, but China can build new ones for $1,200," writes the Virginian Pilot. The SHRIMP draws upon that waste stream, providing both humanitarian aid and waste management.



» Click here to visit Vestal Design

LifeStraw is winner of the INDEX: people's choice award

Designed in: Netherlands, Denmark, Israel

Problem: Getting clean water to people in developing countries.
The world's greatest killer is diarrhoeal diseases from bacteria like typhoid, cholera, E. coli, salmonella etc.



Solution: With LifeStraw™ which lasts for one person's annual needs of clean water, nobody needs to die from these diseases. This design is made with special emphasis on avoiding any moving parts, to disregard spare parts, and to avoid the use of electricity, which does not exist in many areas in the Third World.

But as force is needed to implement the filtering, LifeStraw™ uses the natural source of suckling that even babies are able to perform.

The LifeStraw™ is produced at a price that people in the business find hard to believe, but it is essential to be able to present an affordable price to the consumer in the Third World. So far the product is not marketed yet, but after intensive laboratory tests we are now conducting field tests to observe where the filter could be improved for users. When fully used in the Third World this will indeed be a lifesaver.

» Click here to read the interview with the lead designer

World Peace Dome - starting from Zero by Mitchell Joachim & Michael Sorking Studio (left) and Fab Tree Hab - Local Biota Living Graft by Mitchell Joachim, Javier Arbona & Lara Greden


Mitchell W. Joachim is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Architecture: Computation Group). His dissertation is entitled Tall Building Clusters for Ecological Cities - An Integrated Code of Structures, Streets, and Skies. Prior to MIT, he completed two master's degree programs; at Harvard University (MAUD) and Columbia University (M.Arch). Currently he is a researcher at the Media Lab Smart Cities Group, collaborating with his advisor William J. Mitchell on the General Motors/Frank O. Gehry Concept Car.



Prior to MIT, he completed two master's degree programs; at Harvard University (MAUD) and Columbia University (M.Arch). Currently he is a researcher at the Media Lab Smart Cities Group, collaborating with his advisor William J. Mitchell on the General Motors/ Frank O. Gehry Concept Car. In parallel with Gehry Partners in Los Angles, he has been actively working as an architect on the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project. During his time in Cambridge, he has been the Moshe Safdie and Associates Research Fellow award winner and a Martin Family Society Fellow for Sustainability. Previously he has been an architect at Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners, and the Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City. Mitchell has served as visiting faculty in sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work is published in "How Harvard would remake Atlanta", (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2001), Michael Sorkin Studio: Wiggle (Monacelli Press, 1998), and "The Guru of Impossible Engineering Creates a Car", (Popular Science, 2004). His winning design of living structures - Fab Tree Hab - with Habitat for Humanity and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art has been honored with a nomination for the INDEX Award and exhibited internationally.


» Click here to see Mitchell Joachim's outstanding Portfolio

Designer Peter Brewin promises water and energy savings

PRESS RELEASE
28 June 2005

Brittish Standards Institute award winner showered with success. A revolutionary high-performance re-circulating shower which uses 70 per cent less water and 40 per cent less energy than conventional showers, has today won the BSI (British Standards Institution) 2005 Environmental Design Award.

The system, designed by Peter Brewin, a student at the Royal College of Art, brings significant environmental benefits and consumer cost savings by re-circulating water and cleaning it to a high standard before re-use.

By reducing water usage by 70 per cent and energy use by 40 per cent, the shower would allow a family of four taking one shower per day to save over £170 per year on its utility bills. The same family would reduce its overall water usage by almost 43,000 litres per year while Greater London's eight million population could reduce water usage by around 85 billion litres per year - the equivalent of 85,000 Olympic sized swimming pools - by using the shower.

The shower works on similar principles to a Dyson vacuum cleaner, using filters and hydro cyclones to clean the re-circulated water and re-heat it to the desired temperature before re-use. In addition the shower has a number of benefits including easy installation to the cold water supply, pressure equivalent to a power shower, chlorine filter, digital temperature control and water meter giving water usage per shower. The shower also features a pause button. This means that the water flow can be paused - only delivering water when it is exactly the right temperature.

BSI, which works with business to encourage the uptake of sustainable business practice, has run the Environmental Design Awards with the RCA for 11 years. Commenting on this year's winner, Awards judge and BSI Sustainability Manager Nick Marshall said: "Peter has used innovative design to provide a solution to an immediate environmental problem combined with significant cost savings for consumers. This highly commercial proposition is particularly relevant in the year when water shortages are predicted for London and many parts of the UK."

On being announced the winner of the BSI Environmental Design Award, Peter Brewin of the RCA's Industrial Design Engineering department explained what drove him to create the concept of the re-circulating shower: "My aim was to create something that benefits both consumers and the environment, because designing something which is good for the environment but which has no commercial value did not make sense, because it will never get to market. By saving on energy and water usage the shower will enable people to reduce their impact on the environment and save money at the same time."

BSI first became involved with the Royal College of Art in 1994. The Awards scheme was conceived as a vehicle to promote the synergy between design and standards, aiming to encourage better links between the worlds of design and industry and explore the mutual benefits in terms of innovations in products and processes.

The 2005 BSI Award runners-up are Matthew Appleton of the RCA's Communication Art & Design department for his "Afterlife" Project, which investigates the by-products of the modern manufacturing process, and Tomek Rygalik of Design Products for his Sustainable Light Solution Project, which distils all the components of a light fixture into a sustainable one-part design.

As part of the BSI Awards presentation, international architect Will Alsop will be delivering the BSI Environmental Design Award Inaugural Lecture on sustainable design during the Tuesday 28 June 2005 Innovation Night at the Royal College of Art. Innovation Night is one of the principal events in the RCA calendar, enabling some 300 senior people from the business, research and higher education communities to meet in the context of the MA Degree Show.

Energy saving calculations:

Peter Brewin, the shower's inventor, has made careful calculations of how energy efficient his shower really is and uses the figure of 40 per cent.

He explains: "My calculations show a 57 per cent energy saving, however this is only the heating energy saved and is a thermodynamic maximum. I prefer to talk about a 40 per cent saving because my shower also requires a pump (400W) and a few other electrical components such as the mixer and control electronics, as well as allowing for some heat loss from the system during the re-circulation. Thus I'm sure that the figure of 40 per cent is a realistic minimum saving, and in reality it is likely to be a bit more."

» Click here to view the entire article
» Click here to view a Flash animation of how the shower works
» Click here to download the Flash plugin

Photo Courtesy of William Crawford and Peter Brewin

Designed by Peter Brewin and Will Crawford, Concrete Canvas has won 9 awards including the New /Business Challenge and Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award. It is backed by the Selected Works Scheme at the Royal College of Art. A patent has been filed. Crawford Brewin Ltd. is working to bring Concrete Canvas to market. They are currently seeking financial backing to develop the technology from working scale prototypes to fully detailed pre-production prototypes, this will take 10 months from funding.

The Need
Concrete Canvas (CC) has 2 major advantages over tents:

1. Operational: CC enables a hardened structure from day one of a crisis. It provides much better protection in extreme climatic conditions, better security against looting and enables otherwise impossible medical procedures.
2. Financial: CC has a design life of over 10 years, whereas tents only survive for 2 years and must be replaced. Therefore, Concrete Canvas is a one stop solution, saving effort and costs over the lifetime of medium to long term operations.

Photo Courtesy of William Crawford and Peter Brewin


Key Facts

• Rapid: enables users to produce hardened structures within a few hours, with
  comparable labour to a tented structure.
• Insulating: the concrete shell has good thermal properties and can be covered in earth or snow for increased insulation.
• Durable: far more durable than tenting with a minimum design life of 10 years.
• Secure: provides a level of security not possible with soft skinned structures, protecting stores and equipment.
• Sterile: can be delivered sterile; allowing previously impossible surgical procedures to be performed in situ from day one of a crisis.
• Strong: the low mass and fibre matrix locked inside the concrete, gives the structure good earthquake performance. The compressive structure means it can also be covered with sand bags, earth etc. to provide protection against shrapnel.
• Semi-Permanent: provides all the benefits of a permanent structure without the associated costs and time delays.

How Concrete Canvas Works

CC is a rapidly deployable hardened shelter that requires only water and air for construction. It can be deployed by a person without any training in under 40 minutes and is ready to use in 12 hours. The key to CC is the use of inflation to create a surface that is optimised for compressive loading. This allows thin walled concrete structures to be formed which are both robust and lightweight. CC consists of a cement impregnated fabric (Concrete Cloth) bonded to the outer surface of an inflatable plastic inner. It forms a Nissen-hut shaped structure with over 16 m2 of floor space, the technology can be scald to provide larger structures. The stages of deployment are as follows:


Delivery

CC01 comes delivered folded in a sealed plastic sack. The dry weight is 230kg, an 8 man lift and light enough to be transported on a pick-up truck or light aircraft.

Hydration

The sack is positioned and filled with water¹. The volume of the sack controls the water: cement ratio eliminating water measurement. The bag is then left for 15 minutes while the cement hydrates, this is aided by the fibre matrix which wicks water into the cement. Once hydrated, the sack is cut along its seams it then forms part of the ground sheet. Deployment is done at dusk to avoid over drying the cement.

Inflation

The structure is unfolded to form the shelter's footprint. A chemical pack is activated which releases a controlled volume of gas into the plastic inner and inflates the structure.

Setting

The concrete cloth cures in the shape of the inflated inner and twelve hours later the structure is ready to use. Doors and ventilation holes are left with no concrete cloth bonded to the plastic skin this allows access points to be easily cut from the inner once the cement has dried.

The fibres of the fabric form a coherent fibre matrix within the concrete providing tensile reinforcement. This greatly improves the composite strength of the shelter providing a durable protection with a design life of over ten years. Because the structure can withstand a very high distributed compressive load it is possible to pile snow, earth, sandbags etc on top. This enables excellent thermal properties and can provide protection against shrapnel, blasts and small arms.
Once CC has fulfilled its primary application as an emergency shelter, it is highly likely that a secondary use would be found for the structure. During field research we found a multitude of secondary applications such as agricultural storage and accommodation. CC can, however, be demolished using basic tools. The thin walled structure has a very low mass, leaving little material for disposal.

¹ Water does not need to be potable but must not be sewage or sea water, volume is 120lts = 12 persons' daily UN water ration.

» concretecanvas.org.uk

INDEX: is a world event for design and innovation set to take place every four years in Copenhagen. It will be launched in September 2005.


The 2005 event features:

• INDEX: Award, the world's largest design and innovation awards
• Two major international design exhibitions
• A summit for the world's creative leaders.

INDEX: is also an international network of designers, corporations, organizations and design institutions that collaborate in disseminating and applying the latest knowledge within the field of design embraced by the INDEX: event.



2005 INDEX Award Nominee
How did this design improve life?:
The Simple Toilet, pissoir, bidet, washbasin, sink and bin are household sanitation devices for poor conditions where no water is available. They can be hand-made in minutes from common or waste materials and need only a cup of water for operation. They are also odour-free, portable and can re-use water and waste. Their construction involves survival skills that enable people in need to immediately improve their living conditions without depending on any external aid. People can learn them in hours and even develop their own technique for assembly and use. It is a short-term solution for emergency situations and a long-term solution for the poorest worldwide.

INDEX: is a world event for design and innovation set to take place every four years in Copenhagen. It will be launched in September 2005. Events will be featured every fourth year from 2005. The network seeks to ensure that the recommendations set up by the world's creative leaders during the 2005 Views summit will be put to the test before the second INDEX: event in 2009. INDEX: Award is just one of several events focusing on Design to Improve Life. In 2005, INDEX: will stage the following events:

• INDEX: Award, with focus on what Design to Improve Life is. The best international examples of Design to Improve Life will be exhibited and a select few will be awarded.
• Views — Charter for Improved Life, a summit for the world's leading creative minds who are set to formulate how designers can work with Design to Improve Life and thus address important global issues.
• Future Scenarios, which illustrates the importance of working with Design to Improve Life.

» Click here to find out more