The 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Finalists

The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) announced six finalist projects for the 2010 challenge.

The finalists have undergone a rigorous review for adherence to the entry criteria including an interview 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 and after serious consideration by an 11 panel jury are up for the final prize.

These are the six finalist projects:

Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa, Asia and Latin America
Bunker Roy of The Barefoot College, Tilonia, Rajasthan, India

The Barefoot approach has reached remote rural inaccessible villages in 15 of the least developed countries in Africa. Illiterate rural mothers and grandmothers who have never left their villages in their lives within 6 months of training (without using the written word) in India have solar electrified their own villages. Learn more

A Call to Farm : FarmShare
BK Farmyards

FarmShare reconnects farmers and consumers as co-producers of the foodscape. The strategy uses social media to pool all the resources of Brooklyn into a crowd-sourced decentralized farm. Voting for local food with their forks already, Brooklyn food activists will pool their time and their waste in A Call to Farm. Learn more

Eco-Boulevards
Martin Felsen + Sarah Dunn

Chicagoans discard over one billion gallons of Great Lakes water per day. This “wastewater” never replenishes one of the world’s most vital resources. As a remedy, this project re-conceives the Chicago street-grid as a holistic Bio-System that captures, cleans and returns wastewater and storm-water to the Lakes via “Eco-Boulevards.” Learn more

Living Building Challenge
Jason F. McLennan and Eden Brukman

The Living Building Challenge is a visionary strategy for creating a socially just, culturally rich and ecologically benign built environment. Rather than providing points for incremental improvements in building performance, it measures success against the end goal of true sustainability and provides a framework for restoring balance in the human ecosystem. Learn more

Operation Hope - Permanent water and food security for Africa’s impoverished millions
Allan Savory on behalf of Africa Centre for Holistic Management Trustees and staff

This project demonstrates how to reverse desertification of the world’s savannas and grasslands, thereby contributing enormously to mitigating climate change, biomass burning, drought, flood, drying of rivers and underground waters, disappearing wildlife, massive poverty, social breakdown, violence and genocide. Learn more

Watergy Greenhouse
Martin Buchholz, Inventor and Initiator of Watergy

Watergy is a bionic concept, immitating the biosphere within an enclosure, using wind, rain and related energy dissipation. It allows 85% recycling of irrigation water, while accumulation of CO2 leads to higher rates of photosynthesis. Further applications are plant protection (no pesticides), processing of greywater, desalination and heat supply. Learn more