Trimtab Vol. 18 No. 3
BFI Updates
Announcing the 2017 Fuller Challenge Semifinalists
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is delighted to announce the Semifinalists for the 2017 Fuller Challenge. A record number of entries were submitted in this 10th anniversary cycle of the program. Seventeen proposals were selected as Semifinalists from more than 460 entries. The seventeen Semifinalists have undergone rigorous evaluation for adherence to the Fuller Challenge criteria over a period of 4 months by members of the Challenge Review Committee, which includes more than a dozen long-standing reviewers as well as external advisors and experts. |
Welcoming our 2017 Program Fellow
Through our prestigious Fellowship Program, BFI welcomes outstanding early-career practitioners to join the Fuller Challenge Review Committee for four months of the rigorous application review process. The fellowship is designed as an interdisciplinary, collaborative experience, and provides a unique opportunity to contextualize whole-systems thinking through immersion in the Fuller Challenge entry pool. In 2017, BFI welcomed Program Fellow Alicja Walters. |
Trends + Perspectives
A Fuller Archives Story
We think you’ll enjoy Ted Mills’s interesting account of the history of the Fuller Archives, 200 linear feet of material representing Fuller’s almost 88 years of correspondence. This correspondence along with everything else, including his daughter’s report cards, were part of a giant scrapbook of sorts. Fuller called it the Dymaxion Chronofile. He cross-referenced its contents with 13,500 index cards. The archives also include “over 2,500 original sketches, blueprints, original posters, and working drawings,” 30,000 photos, 25,000 slides, 64,000 feet of film, 1,500 hours of audio tape, 35 file drawers filled with manuscripts, and much more. |
In Search of Integrity by Greg Watson
Former BFI board member Greg Watson recounts how his time at the New Alchemy Institute led him to discover the work of Buckminster Fuller. He explores the origin, meaning, and contemporary relevance of "hypocracy"--"a hybrid of democracy and hypocrisy"--one of Fuller’s lesser-known neologisms mentioned in his little-known poem “Integrity.” This story of Greg’s quest is not only an accessible introduction and overview of many of Fuller’s ideas, but also an elegant summary of Greg’s own work in which he applies the principles of evolution. |
Drawdown Maps 100 Solutions to Global Warming
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming, the book resulting from Project Drawdown, co-founded by BFI’s Executive Director Amanda Joy Ravenhill with author Paul Hawken, analyzes the details of what it might actually take not only to stop global warming but also to potentially begin its reversal. A team of researchers spent two years examining data of 100 substantive ways to reduce or sequester emissions and calculating how much those solutions could achieve over the next three decades. |
Resources
The Encore Prize
The Encore Prize: Generation to Generation Challenge seeks applications from organizations and individuals who are thinking creatively about how to harness the skills and experience of “encore-stage” adults — people 50+ — in support of young people. Public voting is open until August 31st. |
What Is Reality?
This provocative video from Quantum Gravity Research describes the organization’s Emergence Theory, which proposes that the fabric of space and time are woven together from 3D quasicrystals based on tetrahedrons. They propose that this is the “fundamental substructure of all of reality,” a notion deeply resonant with fundamental insights within Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics. |
Dymaxion Quilt
Haptic Lab, an interdisciplinary design studio founded by Brooklyn architect Emily Fischer is offering a Dymaxion Map Quilt with a percentage of proceeds going to BFI. The Dymaxion Projection is the only flat map of the entire surface of the Earth that reveals our planet as one island in one ocean, without any visually obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents. It was developed by Buckminster Fuller who "by 1954, after working on the map for several decades," finally realized a "satisfactory deck plan of the six and one half sextillion ton Spaceship Earth." |
Upcoming Events
Register for the 2017 Bioneers Conference
The 2017 Bioneers Conference will be held at the Marin Center in San Rafael, California this October 19- 23. For nearly 30 years, this gathering has showcased incredible speakers, including leaders in the environmental, social activism, food justice movements, and many more. Registration is now open. |
Arquideas | Museum of the Ancient Nile (MoAN) Egypt international architecture competition.
The Museum of the Ancient Nile (MoAN) Egypt is hosting competition for architecture students and young architects, and submissions will be accepted until September 22nd. The competition asks participants to conceive of a museum that will submerge visitors in the ancient Nile and become an essential experience for tourists who wish to comprehend how Egyptian civilization proliferated. |
“Think Resilience,” Self Directed Online Course
We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval, which prompts a profoundly important question: What should we do? The Post Carbon Institute believes two things are absolutely critical: 1. Understanding the true nature of the challenges we face. 2. Building resilience at the community level. That's why they've created a new online course Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century to help us get started. |
From The Idea Index
Fuller Challenge Winner Ecovative obtains $9.1 million contract with the US Department of Defense
2013 Fuller Challenge Winner Ecovative Design has been awarded a contract valued at up to $9.1 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop next generation building materials: living materials that are more versatile, more efficient, and more cost effective in rapidly creating structures, by literally growing those structures in places where they are needed. |
From the Store
Limited Edition Portfolio available on BFI's online store
A Limited Edition print portfolio of new works was created to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Buckminster Fuller. Published by The Buckminster Fuller Institute in 2015, the portfolio includes ten giclee color prints by artists Mel Chin, Fritz Haeg, Matthew Day Jackson, Helen + Newton Harrison, Maya Lin, Mary Mattingly, Pedro Reyes, Tomas Saraceno, and Stephen Talasnik. The portfolio is now available on BFI's online store for a discounted price. All purchases directly support the non-profit institute. |
About Trimtab
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