KTK-BELT’s Vertical University Project approaches conservation and education in Nepal, the most vertical country in the world, through the design of a “Vertical University” comprising cooperatively owned “Learning Grounds” at various altitudes in distinct ecological areas.

Finalists
2017

Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña (in English, Martín Peña Channel Community Land Trust) has designed the ENLACE project to address a variety of pressing needs in this poor, underserved, historically disenfranchised “informal” community near the center of San Juan.

Net-Works is a highly innovative program that interweaves community development, environmental protection, and closed-loop economic production.

OpenAQ fosters a far-flung series of grassroots networks that fight “air inequality” by building and using the only global, real-time, and historical, open-air quality data platform in the world, aggregating data from, so far, 47 countries and more than 5,400 ground stations.

Sistema.bio is a Mexican social enterprise founded in 2010, the enterprise provides comprehensive biodigester installations for small farmers to support energy independence, reduce pollution and support capacity-building. The technology enables small farmers to transform organic waste into methane gas and organic fertilizer, which increases their efficiency, productivity and resilience.
2016

CommuniTree is a simple but practical, well-executed approach to tackling three interlinked problems: deforestation, climate change, and poverty. The project ingenuously connects the dots around CO2 reduction and the generation of sustainable, local economies.

Cooperación Comunitaria has envisioned and is implementing a comprehensive model to radically improve these marginalized populations' living conditions by working with communities to rebuild their homes.

The Urban Death Project (UDP) has designed a scalable, regenerative death care model based on the natural process of decomposition. In the Recomposition centers that the UDP envisions, bodies and forest waste are composted and transformed into soil.

The Sentinel Project has developed Una Hakika: a hybrid of communications technology, social insight, and beneficial use of social media. The project leverages both online and offline “informational architecture” to de-escalate conflict.

PITCHAfrica identifies the need for water as a critical global problem, and transforms community dynamics by offering an elegantly simple solution. In a nested way, this design intervention is at once a social, educational, medical, environmental, and economic intervention.
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For further information about the finalists and other entrants of the Fuller Challenge, 2008-2013, please visit Idea Index 1.0.

Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s assertion that “pollution is nothing but resources we’re not harvesting,” Algae Systems uses a closed-loop, systemic approach to generate value from wastewater, providing a crucial, economically and environmentally sustainable service.