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.

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

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.

Thanks to all those that joined Worldchanging.com and the Buckminster Fuller Institute on the 21st of November.

» View pictures from this event
» Listen to a podcast (courtesy of LMCC)
» Read a review of the event on worldchanging.com
» View the original announcement