The Buckminster Fuller Challenge

published Sep 17, 2007
ends Oct 30, 2007

The Buckminster Fuller Institute has announced a call for entries to The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, an international design science competition which seeks to confer a prize of $100,000 to a single winning solution.

Prize monies will be awarded in June, 2008 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth's ecological integrity.

Inspired by the life and work of visionary 20th Century futurist and global thinker, R. Buckminster Fuller, The Challenge seeks solutions that epitomize what Fuller called the trimtab principle.

The Trimtab - a nautical term for a tiny rudder on the trailing edge of the main rudder of very large vessels, causes an initial momentum allowing the main rudder to turn with less effort in pulling the whole ship around.

"We anticipate receiving many creative and viable solutions that may, at first glance, not seem commensurate with the task at hand - but upon closer inspection we'll discover they contain certain missing ingredients that are just what it will take to help bring about a future that is ecologically sustainable", remarks Challenge co-founder and BFI Executive Director, Elizabeth Thompson.