TheBuckminsterFuller
Challenge 2011
ARCHITECTING THE FUTURE NEW YORK CITY JUNE 8-10, 2011
Welcome from Executive Director, Elizabeth Thompson
On behalf of the Buckminster Fuller Institute Board of Directors, it is with great pleasure to welcome you to Architecting the Future, a three-day forum of comprehensive anticipatory design science idea and strategies culminating in the celebration of the winner of the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. We started the Challenge in 2007 with the support of a visionary donor as an experiment. We wanted to find those inspired individuals whose commitment to making the world work for all has driven them to leave behind conventional approaches, frameworks and in some cases wisdom to design new ways to think, plan and solve some of the most entrenched and pressing problems we face today. Now in our fourth cycle, we have been astonished at the depth and breadth of the work we have had the privilege to review. It is an inspiring and humbling experience. We have also had the great honor of working each year with our distinguished panel of jurors – some of the great leaders in the world. They have an unenviable task of selecting the finalists and eventually the winner – and this year in particular they had to grapple long and hard to arrive at their final selection. You will have the chance to witness this for yourself on Wednesday June 8th as we hear from each of the four finalists following a keynote by the ever illuminating John Thakara who served as a juror in 2010. On Thursday we will convene a conversation amongst a handful of our jurors and Challenge participants to explore some of the opportunities and synergies we see emerging from the growing body of work – particularly focused in urban environments - coming through the Challenge program. We will explore how we can catalyze deeper levels of cooperation, knowledge sharing and pattern recognition to help accelerate greater degrees of synergy amongst existing efforts. And finally on Friday we will announce and celebrate the winner of The 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Our evening will begin with some words from David Orr who joined us this year as a juror. We are very excited by the momentum the program is achieving – it was recently named Socially Responsible Design’s Highest Award by Metropolis Magazine and we welcome your support as we evolve and grow the program. Thank you for joining us,
Elizabeth Thompson
About The Buckminster Fuller Challenge “Make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offence or disadvantage to anyone.” R. Buckminster Fuller
Short term reductionist thinking which dominates all industrialized societies is a fundamental cause of the massive social, economic and environmental deterioration our world is confronted with today. It is now painfully obvious to many that most attempts by civil, corporate, scientific, academic and government sectors to deal with these breakdowns, despite good intentions and significant investment, often exhibit little more than a reflexive default to the same reductionist approach that created the problems in the first place. Little if any attention is ever directed toward optimizing whole systems. Instead the focus remains riveted only on improving various parts in isolation. Not surprisingly, when it comes to solving complex problems, actions are typically fragmented, disjointed and piecemeal. The net result: on a global scale the level of deterioration is rapidly increasing and imbalances have already reached crisis proportions. During the past half century pioneers like Buckminster Fuller and other visionaries responded to the failure of reductionism by developing new approaches to meeting human needs, concurrent with preserving the vital diversity of cultures and ecosystems that form the fabric of life on Earth.
After decades of tracking world resources, innovations in science and technology, and human needs, Fuller asserted that options exist to successfully surmount the crises of unprecedented scope and complexity facing all humanity— he issued an urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all. Fuller coupled this intention with a pioneering approach aimed at solving complex problems. This approach, which he called comprehensive, anticipatory design science, combines an emphasis on individual initiative and integrity with whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature’s underlying principles. Answering Fuller’s call Challenge is all about.
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“Socially Responsible Design’s Highest Award” Metropolis Magazine, June 2010 Fuller’s challenge inspired BFI to launch The Buckminster Fuller Challenge in 2007 offering a cash award of $100,000 to support the development of strategies with significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Winners of the prize must exemplify the spirit of Fuller’s comprehensive approach to defining and solving problems, and have the potential to drive systemic change in tangible ways. The major objectives of The Buckminster Fuller Challenge can be summarized as follows: 1. Set the bar for what it means to design for sustainability through transforming our understanding of and approach to solving complex problems. 2. Develop a unique, criteria driven process that encourages the development of systems-based solutions and pushes entrants to new levels of comprehensive design thinking. 3. Promote and reward exemplary strategies in order to accelerate their implementation.
around the world. Increasingly, these players use prize money and recognition awards as an effective tool for spurring breakthrough innovation and to propel under recognized initiatives into public view. Since its inception the Buckminster Fuller Challenge carved out a unique niche amongst other prize/award programs. It remains the only large-scale international prize explicitly calling for solutions that take a whole-systems approach. Contenders for the prize are required to go well beyond developing specialized standalone innovations. They must present comprehensive strategies that simultaneously address all the key dimensions of a given sustainability challenge – social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions, as well as technology and policy issues. From start to finish the entry and evaluation process provides a fertile, cutting edge framework for how to think and design holistically. Winners of the Challenge best exemplify how this unique framework can be applied on the ground to catalyze systemic level change.
To date over 850 entries addressing a variety of technological, humanitarian and ecological challenges have been received from over 100 countries. A jury comprised of distinguished leaders in sustainability and visionary design thinking selects a winner from a group of finalists through unanimous consent. Twenty-five jurors have participated in the program thus far as well as more than a dozen advisors. Distinguishing Characteristics A number of influential players within the sustainability/design/social change arenas are spotlighting the best, brightest and most inspirational innovators from
OmniOculi, a limited edition sculpture created by Tom Shannon for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Winner
“If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do ... How would I be? What would I do?” — Buckminster Fuller
2011 REVIEW TEAM
CRITERIA
All entries are vetted for compliance with the entry criteria and eligibility requirements. Several rounds of in-depth dialogue take place amongst the review team to determine which entries will be advanced.
• COMPREHENSIVE - applies a whole systems approach to all facets of the design and development process; aims to simultaneously address multiple goals, requirements, conditions and issues
The review team is an experienced group of people drawn from diverse fields of expertise including new media and media ecology, geo visualization, education, science, engineering, energy, urban and community planning, design, business and social investing, sustainability, art, architecture, philanthropy and the life and work of Buckminster Fuller. The group is comprised of members of BFI’s staff & Board, advisors to the Challenge and other technical experts as required.
• ANTICIPATORY - factoring in critical future trends and needs as well as projected impacts of implementation in the short and long term
They include: Dayyan Armstrong Ben Arnow Joshua Arnow Jay Baldwin Paul Beaton William Browning Martin Bucholz Will Elkins Gary Flomenhoft JP Harpignies Jemilah Magnusson Lucilla Marvel Christine Negra Nirmala Nair JenJoy Roybal Daniel Taylor Elizabeth Thompson Greg Watson
• ECOLOGICALLY RESPONSIBLE - reflecting nature’s underlying principles while enhancing the Earth’s life-support systems • FEASIBLE- Relying primarily on current technology and existing resources. • VERIFIABLE - Able to withstand rigorous empirical testing. • REPLICABLE- Able to scale and adapt to a broad range of conditions.
We want the winning solution to be what Fuller called a trimtab Trimtabs are small steering devices used on ships and airplanes which demonstrate how relatively small amounts of leverage, energy, and resources strategically applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change.
2008 Winning Solution
John Todd
Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia
John Todd is a leading pioneer in ecological design. He pulls from his life-long experience to develop a visionary approach to restore and heal the Appalacian region. A four-part strategy incorporates dextoxifying the soils, carbon sequestration, renewable energy, institutional modeling and ecomomic development. The solution operates from a deep understanding of the “preferred state�, a major component of the criteria for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
2009 Winning Solution
Smart Cities Group, MIT
Sustainable Personal/Mobility Mobility on Demand
Mobility-on-Demand systems utilize fleets of shared-use lightweight electric vehicles placed at automatic charging racks throughout city. The CityCar and RoboScooter, both folding vehicles, minimize parking space and can be picked-up and dropped-off at any rack. Mobility-on-Demand systems maximize mobility and dramatically reduce congestion and pollution through energy and land-use efficiency.
2010 Winning Solution
Allan Savory and Team
Operation Hope: Permanent water and food security for Africa’s impoverished millions
This project demonstrates how to reverse desertification of the world’s savannas and grasslands by applying Holistic Management, an approached developed and pioneered by Allan Savory. Large-scale application can contribute enormously to mitigating climate change, biomass burning, drought, flood, drying of rivers and underground waters, disappearing wildlife, massive poverty, social breakdown, violence and genocide.
2011 FINALIST
Blue Ventures
Al Harris + Richard Nimmo + Frances Humber + Kathleen Edie + Ben Metz
Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Our highly acclaimed integrated conservation programmes work with some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of our work help us propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere.
2011 FINALIST
FrontlineSMS
Ken Banks + Laura Walker Hudson + Alex Anderson + Josh Nesbit + Morgan Belkadi + Ryan Jones + Sarah George
FrontlineSMS empowers frontline social organisations to leverage the power and reach of mobile technology to enable positive change. We provide organizations in remote, rural regions of the developing world with software that turns a laptop into a mass messaging hub, without any need for Internet connectivity.
2011 FINALIST
Participatory Mapping as a Means of Protecting Forest in the Congo Basin The Rainforest Foundation UK
This project empowers local forest communities to use cutting edge technologies to map their lands and resources and use this evidence as advocacy and negotiation tools for more secure land tenure. Through this, it also serves as an effective tool to contribute to environmental protection and poverty reduction efforts.
2011 FINALIST
TARA AKshar+
George C. Varughese + Col. M.S.Ahluwalia + Irfan Khan + Pushpendra + Pragya Tiwary + Rakesh Khanna + Victor Lyons
Delivering a scalable solution to adult illiteracy through a highly innovative programme using sophisticated learning techniques and memory hooks, through minimally trained, computer-aided instructors. It enables almost anyone to read, write and do simple arithmetic with more than 95% success rate in just seven weeks of 2 hour classes daily.
THE JURY The proposals have undergone a rigorous review for adherence to the entry criteria and interviews with the individual or team behind the strategy. They were advanced from a pool of 215 entries submitted that were then narrowed down to 30 semi-finalists. A panel of 11 distinguished jurors – all internationally recognized leaders in design and sustainability, met for an intense and lively deliberation April 20, 2010. The selection of the winner, runner-up and four honorable mentions was unanimous.
Michael Ben-Eli is founder of the Sustainability Laboratory, established in order to develop and demonstrate breakthrough approaches to sustainability practices, expanding prospects and producing positive, life affirming impacts on people and ecosystems in all parts of the world .
MICHAEL BEN ELI
Dr. Ben-Eli was a close associate of R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom he collaborated on projects involving research on advanced structural systems and exploration of issues related to the management of technology and world resources for the advantage of all.
Valerie Casey is a globally recognized designer and innovator. She was named a “Guru” of the year by Fortune magazine, a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and a “Master of Design” by Fast Company. She was also selected as one of the “World’s Most Influential Designers” by BusinessWeek.
VALERIE CASEY
Casey consults with start-ups, governments, and companies all over the world on challenges ranging from creating new products and services, to transforming organizational processes and behaviors.
2011 jury
BONNIE DEVARCO
JEAN GARDNER
JIN JIAMAN
Bonnie DeVarco is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, curator and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the Media X Research Network at Stanford University. As an early pioneer of virtual worlds, she developed VLearn3D, one of the first international hubs for educators, and spearheaded the development of numerous virtual education environments in the past 12 years. She served as archivist for the Buckminster Fuller collection from 1989-1995 and continues to work with the Fuller Collection at Stanford University.
Jean Gardner is an activist, writer, teacher, and consultant on sustainable design issues. She is an Associate Professor of Social-Ecological History and Design, The School for Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School. Gardner wrote the first book on Urban Wilderness: Nature in New York City. The national AIA Committee on the Environment awarded her graduate course “Issues and Practices in Architecture and Urbanism” special recognition for eco-literacy teaching. The New York City Chapter of the AIA awarded her a Special Citation for her work as an Urban Ecologist, Author, and Educator in both the architectural field and in the public realm.
Ms. Jin Jiaman has 25 years of experience in the environment field in China with extensive experience in project management and coordination in government and business relations. Prior to joining GEI-China, she worked at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) as the Director of the Technology Service Center, and then the Vice Director of the Dean’s Office. Before that she served as a manager of UNEPnet Beijing Earth Station, and from 1992 to 1996 the Secretary and then the Administrating Director of Leader Environment and Development (LEAD) China program.
2011 jury Jury Member + Guest Panelist
ROGER MALINA
DANIELLE NEIRENBERG
DAVID ORR
Roger Malina is an astronomer, working in space telescopes and observational cosmology. He is the Director for the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence. For 25 years he has been the Editor of the Art-Science publication Leonardo at MIT Press and the Executive Editor of the Leonardo Book Series at MIT Press. He is the President of the Association Leonardo in Paris, and a member of the board of Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in San Francisco. Roger is particularly interested in promoting the cultural appropriation on contemporary sciences and technology and new ways of creating conditions for art-science collaboration.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 - Innovations that Nourish the Planet for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in The New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and other publications. She has spent the last year traveling to more than 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa looking at environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger and poverty.
David Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont. He is the recipient of six honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging “persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy.� He is the author of Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford University Press, 2009).
2011 jury Jury Member + Guest Panelist
ALAN SAVORY
SIM VAN DIR RYN
Alan Savory co-founded the non-profit organization Holistic Management International with his wife, Jody Butterfield. In 1992 they formed a second non-profit organization in Zimbabwe, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, donating a ranch that would serve as a learning site for people all over Africa. Savory and the five local Chiefs are permanent Trustees of the Africa Centre. His work with the Africa Centre For Holistic Management received the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award.
Sim Van der Ryn is a visionary, author, educator, public leader, and internationally distinguished pioneer in ecological design. For more than 40 years, Sim has been at the forefront of integrating ecological principles into the built environment, creating multi-scale solutions driven by nature’s intelligence. He has served as California’s first energyconscious State Architect, authored seven influential books, and won numerous honors and awards for his leadership and innovation in architecture & planning.
Andrew Zolli is a well-known expert in global foresight and innovation, studying the complex trends at the intersection of technology, sustainability and global society that are shaping our future. He is widely recognized as a writer, thinker, commentator and speaker on futuresrelated topics.
ANDREW ZOLLI
As PopTech’s Curator, Andrew develops the program, theme, speakers, content and the structure of PopTech’s conferences, and has co-led the development of PopTech’s social-innovation-related programs.
About Architecting the Future June 8-10 NEW YORK CITY
There is a movement afoot- of highly motivated individuals all over the world seriously engaged in coming up with solutions to the mounting set of problems we face. These design pioneers and social innovators are not waiting for large scale institutions to deliver us to a sustainable and abundant future. They understand the critical role they play as the change agents for the future we all want to see. These are the type of people whose projects are entered into the The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, featured in the Idea Index 1.0 and shared in the Architecting The Future Events. Concepts, ideas, intellectual notions and ways of thinking and doing are shared through real-world tangible projects at the Architecting The Future Events. The aim is to highlight, accelerate and advance a practice of whole sytems design, taking us one step beyond- jumping to the next “higher-order� of design. This emergent design competence is making it easier to understand, explore and act upon our most pressing global issues, the goal being to reconcile them. Design Science is an approach developed by Buckminster Fuller, nested in our programs, it is used as an orientating framework to help usher in this movement.
DAY ONE: FINALISTS PRESENTATIONS Wednesday, June 8th, from 6-8pm
Location: Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Presentations of the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Finalist. Each finalist is providing a workable solution to the world’s most significant challenges. Among other criteria, entrants were judged on the feasibility of their initiative, whether it is able to withstand rigorous empirical testing, its ability to not only sustain but enhance the environment, and its ability to scale and adapt to a broad range of conditions.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE 6:00 Welcome Allegra Fuller Snyder, Bucky’s Daughter and co-founder of BFI David McConville BFI, Board President Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, BFI 6:15 Keynote: John Thakara 6:45 Presentation of the Finalists - Blue Ventures - FrontlineSMS - Participatory Mapping - TARA Akshar+ 7:45 Discussion- J.P. Harpignies as moderator 8:00 END
John Thackarais
Director of Doors of Perception. Founded as a conference in Amsterdam in 1993. Doors of Perception now organizes festivals and projects around the world in which grassroots innovators work with designers to imagine sustainable futures - and take practical steps to realize them. In addition to event production, John Thackara also helps cities and regions build next-generation institutions. A former London bus driver, and later a book and magazine editor, John was the first Director (1993-1999) of the Netherlands Design Institute. of City Eco Lab at Cite du Design in St Etienne, the main French design biennial.
DAY TWO: URBAN SOLUTION SETS Visionary Strategies for the Future of Cities Thursday, June 9th, from 2-4pm
Location: Center for Architecture, AIA, 536 LaGuardia Place New York, NY 10012 As a result of reviewing entries through the unique lens of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge criteria, we have been able to identify extraordinary examples of comprehensive, integrated strategies that address the urban environment. What has emerged is a pattern of relationships across these urban solutions that imply a level of cooporation and synergy not being discussed, taught or practiced. For this event we will be bringing together urban educators, artist, planners and developers to explore the notion of urban solution sets as a framework to consider advancement around practices that impact the generation/regeneration of our cities. Key Participants: Hillary Brown, New Civic Works + 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Juror William Browning, Founder, Terrapin Bright Green + 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Juror Jean Gardner, Associate Professor of Social-Ecological History and Design, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons the New School for Design + 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Juror Tom Glendening, Project Lead for E3NYC Stacey Murphy, BK Farmyard + 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Finalist John Thakara, Doors of Perception founder and internationally renowned design pioneer + 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Juror
DAY THREE: CONFERRING CEREMONY Winning Solution Revealed Thursday, June 10th, from 6-8pm
Location: Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Join us to celebrate the 2011 Wining PROGRAM SCHEDULE Solution of the Buckminster Fuller 6:00 Welcome Challenge. The program will include a presentation of the winner and Allegra Fuller Snyder, keynote speech by one of the world’s Bucky’s Daughter and thought leaders in environmental co-founder of BFI design; distinguished professor and author, David Orr. David McConville BFI, Board President Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, BFI 6:30
Keynote: David Orr
7:00
Presentation of Finalists Announcement of Honorable Mentions Runner-up and Winner Acceptance Speech Closing Remarks
8:00
END Reception to follow at The New York Open Center 22 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016-7002
“BFI is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and ecosystem health.”
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and the health of our planet’s ecosystems. We aim to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity. Our programs combine unique insight into global trends and local needs with a comprehensive approach to design. We encourage participants to conceive and apply transformative strategies based on a crucial synthesis of whole systems thinking, Nature’s fundamental principles, and an ethically driven worldview. By facilitating convergence across the disciplines of art, science, design and technology, our work extends the profoundly relevant legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller. In this way, we strive to catalyze the collective intelligence required to fully address the unprecedented challenges before us. The Buckminster Fuller Institute is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization, founded in 1983.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Allegra Fuller Snyder, Emeritus David McConville, President Kirk Bergstrom, Vice President Mark Beam Neal Katz Rob Kenner Martin Leaf Jonathan Marvel Lucilla Marvel Jaime Snyder David Walczyk Greg Watson
BFI STAFF Dayyan Armstrong, Challenge Intern Jessica Schwartz Hahn, Peitho Communications, Public Relations Eva Lawrence, Bookeeper Jemilah Magnusson, BFI Intern JenJoy Roybal, Program Manager Chris Thomas, Aministrator Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director
Aknowledgments The work of BFI and this program is made possible by the generous support of the following institutions, foundations and individuals: Anonymous The Atwater Kent Foundation The Brooklyn Brewery BuckyBalls Cedomir Kovacev and Ann Morris The Civil Society Institute Dacra, Inc. The Feldstein Foundation Design The Flora Family Foundation The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation Goetz Boats The Halloran Philanthropies The Highfield Foundation AIA, Chicago AIA, New York, Center for Architecture The Arena Stage, Washington, DC American University School of International Service CUNY, Graduate Center, New York The Cosmos Club Willian Ackerman Joshua & Elyse Arnow Charles Biderman Cheryl Clark Bonnie & Tony DeVarco Christopher & Sharon Saul Davis Nancy LaSalle Martin Leaf
The James Dyson Foundation The Jewish Communal Fund Materials For The Arts The Orange County Community Foundation The Members of The Buckminster Fuller Institute The Morgan Family Foundation Pratt Institute Rudolf Steiner Social Finance Fund Silicon Valley Community Foundation The Sunshine Lady Foundation Wasco, Inc. The Wilcox Family Foundation The Eluminati Hyatt Regency Hotels Bill McDonough + Partners Chicago The National Press Club theuptake.org Muelensteen Gallery The Whitney Museum of American Art Jonathan Marvel Alexandra and Sam May Peter Meisen Serge Smirnoff & Nancy Milliken Philip Moore Josh Pang Allegra Fuller Snyder
We would also like to extend a special thanks to the following people: Joshua Arnow Robert Kenner Jaime Snyder Joao Amorim Ben Arnow Geeta Ayer Paul Beaton Michael Ben-Eli Mark Beam Brooklyn Brewery Hilary Brown William Browning Martin Bucholz The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Fellows The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Jury Ryan Chin Rick Denny Bonnie DeVarco Will Elkins Gary Flomenhoft Griffin Goldsmith Gloria Guerrero JP Harpignies Charlotte Harvey
Matt Howard Debra Johnson Ben Loeffler Jemilah Magnusson Lucilla Marvel Alexandra May David McConville Edwin Muelensteen Nirmala Nair Christine Negra David Orr The School of Design Strategies, Parsons Daniel J. Reiser Jonathan Rose Companies Tom Shannon Rachel Steinberg Susan Szenasy Daniel Taylor John Thakara Hardin Tibbs Victoria Vesna David Walczyk Greg Watson The White Family
Restoration of Buckminster Fuller’s iconic Fly’s Eye Dome at America’s Cup boatyard nearing completion. Goetz Composites, fabricators of some of the most successful race boats in the world, is nearing completion of a historic restoration of one of Buckminster Fuller’s most iconic structures, the 24 foot Fly’s Eye Dome. Patented in 1965, Fuller created two prototypes of this structure – a 24 foot and 50 foot dome. Fuller writes in his seminal book, Critical Path that “the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies.”
In Loving Memory of Joan Arnow
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