Up for the Challenge

Morgan Maher

Each year the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards a single $100,000 prize 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.

John Todd's Living Machines won the 2008 Challenge with the Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia. The project’s methodology fully recognizes that transformation requires rethinking virtually every aspect of how we go about valuing and meeting our life support needs. Its overarching goal is to model a post-industrial economy that mirrors the diverse abundance, cyclic patterns and structural resilience of nature.

Watch the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Movie by Postmodern Times.

"You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied." - Buckminster Fuller