by integrating appropriate technologies and efficient space-use. A cooperative community-economy can help to make the lifesupport dwelling universally affordable. LIFESUPPORT HOUSING: The Lifesupport self-reliant dwelling--or LifeCottage--is a synergetic pattern that is adaptable to all household, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions. It consists of a cottage within a courtyard that encloses garden, water storage, and work spaces. The courtyard can be covered by a retractable roof-canopy, or a geodesic dome, for rain collection and crop protection. A 5000 square-foot (sq ft) LifeCottage can provide basic food self-reliance for 2 to 4 people. The cottage pattern can provide 4 bedroom-spaces in as little as 100 sq ft. The $500 disaster relief raised-floor tent/ $1000 LifeCottage can be completed with owner-built wall and roof panels. The trailer system allows a cottage of up to 1296 sq ft, with 4 to 8 bedrooms, to fold down into an 8 ft wide trailer. COMMUNITY-ECONOMY: The compact contained footprint of the mobile LifeCottage facilitates neighborhood patterns that minimize impact on even public land--and a settlement road system pattern that optimizes public transit. The LifeCottage can be made universally affordable through a cooperative economy that integrates centralized marketing with decentralized production through a regional-global network of local co-ops. Orders received are filled by a co-op close to the origin of each order to eliminate middle-markups, minimize transportation costs, and maximize producer income. Net retail profit is used to create a loan fund for enterprise capitalization, LifeCottage financing, and land acquisition. CONCLUSION: The LifeCottage process can provide the seemingly impossible--a globally affordable means of lifesupport for all--a prerequisite for saving our planetary ecosystem-communities.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

2. IMPLEMENTATION:
The LifeCottage Community Co-op preliminary design is complete and ready for implementation through Project LifeCottage. Prototyping is the next step--with the conviction that we must live the process before we can recommend it to others!

Prototype development would become possible with the $100,000 Challenge Prize.

Prototype demonstration will take place on the 2 acre property on which I live, in collaboration with the owner, James Wilkinson, who has also owned his own design-build business for 20 years. A number of friends and colleagues are eager to participate.

THE 4 PROTOTYPES (specified costs are rough materials estimates only):
My own Backyard LifeCottage: 100 sq ft cottage/ 32 ft diameter courtyard/ ($2000 plus)

Disaster Relief LifeCottage: 256 sq ft raised-floor tent (folds to 2 ft x 8 ft bicycle trailer) and transitions, with tilt-up panels, into a permanent portable dwelling/ 80 ft diameter courtyard/ ($1000)

The Folding Panel Trailer LifeCottage: 24 ft x 32 ft, 768 sq ft, 2 to 6 bedroom cottage, folds down to an 8 ft x 24 ft trailer/ 100 ft diameter courtyard/ ($25,000 plus).

THE LIFECOTTAGE COMMUNITY-ECONOMY DEMONSTRATION:
The Backyard LifeCottage Community will demonstrate food, water, energy, waste recycling self-reliance. A start-up cottage industry producing my BackPocket Chair (designed to fold and carry in a back pocket) will demonstrate livelihood independence.

LIFECOTTAGE CO-OP FORMATION AND PROJECT COLLABORATION:
We will incorporate the LifeCottage Co-op and seek collaborators and resources for a project to demonstrate an owner-built, folding panel trailer LifeCottage EcoPark.

EDUCATION AND LIFECOTTAGE CO-OP NETWORK FORMATION:
We will seek collaboration with interested communities, nonprofits, professionals, and funding sources, to make the LifeCottage affordably ownable for anyone anywhere.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

3. MEETS CRITERIA:
The LifeCottage Community-Economy is comprehensive, anticipatory, and ecologically responsible because it addresses the major symptoms of global crisis, its trajectory, and its root cause.

Our crisis is driven by dwelling process failure that produces resource depletion, habitat destruction, and global climate change. Its trajectory points to economic, monetary, and food systems collapse. Its root cause however, appears to be our inherited belief that survival requires a competitive struggle against others, nature, and existence itself. This has produced technologies designed to maximize power and profit for the few. Because the resulting failure seems to confirm the misunderstanding, we often seek solutions by acting ever more desperately to do what causes failure in the first place! Transformation requires genuine sucess through synergetic cooperation.

The LifeCottage Community-Economy is feasible, verifiable, and replicable because it is based on existing appropriate technologies, and a synergetic pattern that is adaptable to all conditions while working in a full range of sizes, forms, and levels of amenity.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

4. QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
The LifeCottage Community-Economy is the outcome of a nearly life-long quest that began when, as a senior in high school in 1967, my father gave me his copy of Nine Chains to the Moon by Buckminster Fuller. It changed my life--and sparked the quest.

This quest has led to:

Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design (1973); Master of Architecture (1991); University of Washington

Living and training as a Buddhist monk in the Zen tradition, with its practice of extremely frugal living, from 1970 to 1989; certified as a teacher of Buddhism in 1975

Experience living in community--including a mountain climbers' commune; a Buddhist Monestary and Priory; a women's community as the only adult male resident

Extensive construction experience including 15 years of designing, building, and living in a series of tiny, portable solar houses--all smaller than 120 square feet and costing less than $1200

Professional design work for private clients including new house design and remodeling

Incorporation of a non-profit in Washington State

Founding and teaching in the EcoDwelling Concentration, a program for BA and MA students at New College of California, from 2001 until the school's closure in 2008.

Completion of the LifeCottage Community Co-op design itself.