FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: JenJoy Roybal, Tel: 718.290.9283, Email: jroybal (at) bfi (dot) org

WHAT THE 2009 BUCKMINSTER FULLER CHALLENGE WINNERS TELLS US ABOUT SOLVING THE WORLD’S MOST PRESSING PROBLEMS

MAY 18, 2009 NEW YORK CITY — This year the entries to the 2009 Buckminster Challenge demonstrate that we do indeed have the collective determination and genius to solve the world’s most pressing problems. The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) salutes the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award Winner, The Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems (SPM/MoD) ; the Runner-up, Dreaming New Mexico; and the honorable mentions, Cycle for Health and Makuru BioCentres for their extraordinary vision and persistence in pursuing ground breaking strategies to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

The 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge winners demonstrate that breakthrough solutions can come from cornerstone institutions like the Smart Cities group at MIT Media Lab, open-source think tanks like Bioneers, international partnerships between non-government organizations (NGOs) like Umande Trust and GOAL Ireland, and upstart organizations like Cycle for Health. The constellation of agents for transformative change is robust and promising and solutions from a myriad of individual and institutional perspectives are needed to generate appropriate systemic change. More importantly, these ideas and strategies need our financial and intellectual support.

In a statement released today regarding the winning proposal the Buckminster Fuller Institute said,

“Buckminster Fuller insisted that “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This is precisely what the Smart Cities Group at the MIT Media lab has recognized and set out to accomplish through their winning strategy: Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems. Most of the media coverage about this initiative concentrates on the advanced design of the vehicles. This is understandable given our culture’s fascination with futuristic technology. But if you probe deeper, the Media Lab’s strategy seems to transcend the circumscription of sheer engineering prowess. From our perspective, we see certain design principles operating at the core of this initiative which we believe provides the basis of its underlying integrity. Viewed as an integrated whole, one can see that the SPM/MoD strategy seeks to embody the key characteristics of stable, vibrant, complex systems found in nature.”

To read the full statement from The Buckminster Fuller Institute, click here

“Employing Nature’s underlying principles as design criteria has been at the heart of the Bioneers perspective - the organization behind this year’s runner-up - for 20+ years. The jury’s decision to award their Dreaming New Mexico project the honor of runner-up further emphasizes the critical importance The Buckminster Fuller Challenge places on evolutionary strategy, systemic thinking, and comprehensive process. It has been our intention from the beginning to design an application process which put pressure on those entering to push their projects to new levels.” remarked Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director of The Buckminster Fuller Institute.

“For the two of us personally [Dreaming New Mexico co-directors Peter Warshall and Kenny Ausubel], being awarded runner-up is gratifying beyond words. Bucky Fuller was an important influence on both of us .The [application] process of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge encouraged us to think even a little bigger… In Dreaming New Mexico we hit on so many design cylinders that it’s hard to miss Bucky’s influence: comprehensive thinking, anticipatory thinking, systems approaches. What we especially like is the one the Institute named: the “preferred state.” That really captures the essence of “Dreaming.” What would success look like? What do we really want? What is our dream?” said Kenny Ausubel and Peter Warshall from Bioneers said of their experience entering the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

To read the full statement from The Dreaming New Mexico team, click here

The winner and runner-up will be honored at a prize conferring ceremony on June 6th, 2009 at 2pm at The Museum of Contemporary Art, in Chicago followed by a reception and celebration featuring a presentation by design innovator Bruce Mau. The winner will receive a $100,000 prize and limited edition sculpture, omniOcculi by Tom Shannon.

To view all of the entries to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, visit the Idea Index.

For press packets and to arrange interviews with prize winners, contact JenJoy Roybal at jroybal (at) bfi (dot) org or 718.290.9283.