Courtesy BFI/Andrew S. Wright "Rainforest Solutions Project," 2016 Fuller Challenge Winner

The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has issued “an urgent call for a design science revolution” to architects, designers, scientists, and activists around the world for its 10th-annual Fuller Challenge. This design-solution competition asks for entries that reflect inventor and innovator R. Buckminster Fuller’s goals of making “the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time through the spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone."

Open to nonprofits, for-profit organizations, and collaborations, the Fuller Challenge submission guidelines outline winning strategies for entries as being "visionary, comprehensive, anticipatory, economically responsible, feasible, verifiable, and replicable." The Fuller Challenge requests strategies that utilize the "preferred state model," meaning they are “designed to optimize conditions from inception in order to create the most desirable, sustainable, regenerative future outcome.” Initiatives presenting solutions on local, regional, or global scales are welcome. The BFI awards grand prize winners $100,000 to support the development and implementation of their design solution. Winners, finalists and semi-finalists also benefit from BFI's Catalyst Program that, with the help of BFI sponsors and partners, provides opportunities for "additional funding, pro-bono legal services, fast-tracked access to accelerator programs, mentorship opportunities, and international press coverage."

Last year’s grand prize was awarded to social and environmental non-profit Tides Canada Initiative, which, with Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and Stand, submitted the “Rainforest Solutions Project," which confronts deforestation, defense of indigenous rights, and biodiversity loss in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia.

BFI is accepting Fuller Challenge entries until March 31.