Welcoming Our 2016 Program Fellows

Through our prestigious Fellowship Program, BFI welcomes a small number of outstanding students and early-career practitioners to our Review Team for four months each summer. The fellowship is designed as an interdisciplinary collaborative, and provides a unique opportunity to contextualize systems thinking through immersion in the Fuller Challenge review cycle, involving research, writing, and dialog with BFI staff, partners, and senior advisors.

More information about the Fellowship Program can be found here.

We are thrilled to introduce our 2016 Fellows: Christina Ciardullo and Devon Artis-White.

Christina Ciardullo has worked as an architect in city planning in NY, with a focus on interdisciplinary design over different material and generational timescales. Her love of science led her to become involved in architecture for outer space, developing ideas for mini “Spaceship Earths” outside the atmosphere. She currently holds the Ann Kalla Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, where she leads a class of architects, designers, engineers, and scientists working on design and fabrication of a closed-loop sustainable greenhouse for Mars.

“Every method we have of understanding and working within the world requires a we look at it from multiple perspectives, at multiple scales, and over longer periods of time. I am beyond excited to have this opportunity to explore the ingenuity of so many groups and individuals from all over the world working on systemic change, who have the same sense of awe to learn about the world and optimism to think we can have an effect on it.”

Devon is based out of western Vermont where he is pursuing undergraduate degrees in Sustainable Social Innovation as well as Renewable Energy & Ecological Design at Green Mountain College. A philanthropist at heart, his work and vision aim towards the implementation and advocation of built systems and personal and cultural narratives that reconnect people to themselves and the world around them. Most recently this has manifested in a cooperative project as an open-source, digitally designed and manufactured, biomimetic, Optimal Traveling Independent Space (OTIS) for those who cannot fit the contemporary mold laid out by the housing market.

“Sometimes more than the product, the process of design has immense potential to change people and transform their very modes of operation. When I found BFI I was overcome with a sense of affirmation. Affirmation that there is not only a group, but groups of people that are meeting across disciplines to advocate for new frontiers in design and systems thinking. It is a true honor to be working for this organization and with these people.“