The Fuller Challenge Archives
Buckminster Fuller Challenge winners are distinguished by their comprehensive, whole-systems approach to design and implementation. In the 1960’s Fuller launched the Design Science Revolution with an open call to the world’s creative communities “to
Buckminster Fuller Challenge winners are distinguished by their comprehensive, whole-systems approach to design and implementation. These curated archives are the jurors' "best of" entries that span 2007 - 2017. These are inspiring designs!
Here are the categories:
Art / Design
Community / Economics
Education / Communication
Environment / Energy
Food / Agriculture
Health
Materials / Technology
Shelter / Architecture
Transportation
Water / Sanitation
And here is the Fuller Challenge origin story:
In 2010 Fuller Challenge juror David Orr – the esteemed sustainability educator and author – remarked that human civilization has entered the historical equivalent of shooting the dangerous rapids of a treacherous white-water river. With a broken paddle. Blindfolded.
Buckminster Fuller put it in stark relief with this famous question: Are we heading toward Utopia or Oblivion? He challenged his contemporaries to creatively respond to the urgency of this moment by re-framing the crisis as an opportunity pointing to humanity’s “option to make it – to live successfully without compromising the ability for all of life to thrive.”
Fuller demonstrated through his research and design practice that the resources needed for all forms of life on the planet to live in relative peace and prosperity exist. Creatively deployed, these resources are more than enough to raise the standard of living for everybody.
He called for a revolution by design –not political or military - but a revolution driven by the problem-solving creativity of design combined with the empirical demands of science.
Fuller’s practice took a comprehensive approach, starting with the whole; anticipating future trends and needs; employing the scientific method; and aligned with nature’s operating principles. He saw that this way of thinking and doing was to be the future of design. He called his practice design science. And in the 1960’s he launched the Design Science Revolution with an open call to the world’s creative communities “to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”