Buckminster Fuller Institute

Buckminster Fuller Institute Design Lab has a key focus area on bioregional resilience & regeneration (https://lnkd.in/gXsPzJjk). In the 2020s, every region in the world needs the best possible design support to find regenerative pathways for land-use, built environment, infrastructure, energy generation, and economic development in the face of increasing climate, biodiversity, water, food, economic, and other disruptions. In the spirit of Buckminster Fuller's World Game (https://lnkd.in/gTFbnBA4), BFI's goal is to invest in this shared capacity in a lean and agile way, apply Design Science rigorously at regional scale with diverse bioregions (https://lnkd.in/g4nqiQuf), and make an integrated set of data, tools, and processes rapidly and broadly available. Current BFI Design Lab bioregional resilience & regeneration initiatives include: 🐝 BFI has been invited to Co-Found the Indigenous Rewilding Network with Roger Fragua at Flower Hill Institute, an indigenous-led, community-directed nonprofit. The Indigenous Rewilding Network is dedicated to strengthening tribal sovereignty through land return and rewilding projects from tribal nation to continental scale. 🦋 BFI is incubating Bioregional Financing Facilities that can unleash investment – using new types of life-aligned financing models – at the pace and scale required to jump to new levels of coherence, health, and resilience. Project Director Samantha Power discusses the project here (https://lnkd.in/gdkAfHdY), and has co-authored a major design paper that will be released in June. 🦑 BFI is collaborating on a Bioregional Digital Twins immersive visualization initiative led by Glenn Page with Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation (https://lnkd.in/gUJNkYJh) and Jonathan Hughes. 🐜 BFI has been invited to support Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab (https://lnkd.in/drf2nD9k) and AIME as they work to grow additional labs around the world that can provide indigenous protocols for the work of place-sourced regeneration. 🦎 BFI is co-hosting a series of Bioregional Conversations with Isabel Carlisle at Bioregional Learning Centre and others addressing many aspects of bioregional regeneration (https://lnkd.in/eHd6ZHRB). 🦂 BFI is supporting Ties van der Hoeven and Maddie Akkermans of The Weather Makers in developing a knowledge commons for landscape-scale ecological and water cycle restoration. 🐬 BFI is in discussions with senior students and collaborators of Buckminster Fuller's including Bonnie DeVarco, Gil Friend (Co-Founder Institute for Local Self-Reliance), Peter Meisen (World Resources Sim Center), Curt McNamara, P.E., and D W Jacobs (R. Buckminster Fuller play) to explore a network of bioregional hubs with visualization and simulation abilities.

Buckminster Fuller developed Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science as a regenerative design discipline that could be applied at scales ranging from individual buildings to global industries, and from site to bioregion to planet. At each scale, an understanding of universal principles (e.g. ephemeralization or "more with less" and syntropy or "negative entropy") combined with deep understanding of local patterns would ensure cascading benefits across the system and up and down in scale. During the 1960s, Fuller explored the World Game (https://lnkd.in/gTFbnBA4) as a comprehensive peacemaking response to the war games of the time using the best available data analysis, systems modeling, scenario building, computer technology, and information design of its day. Fuller also applied the World Game approach of shared positive scenario building and "spontaneous cooperation" at regional scale, and greatly influenced many key bioregional initiatives: 🦋 Farallones Center, Occidental, California (1974-1990) founded by Sim Van Der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe as an early "bioregional learning center" experimenting with integrated ecological technologies and supporting broader sustainability initiatives across West Marin County. This center continues as the wonderful OCCIDENTAL ARTS & ECOLOGY CENTER. Sim Van der Ryn studied extensively with Fuller and later co-authored the book Ecological Design with Buckminster Fuller Institute Executive Director Dr. Stuart Cowan. 🦀 New Alchemy Institute, Falmouth, Massachusetts (1969-1991) founded by John Todd, Ph.D., Nancy Jack Todd, and William McClarney was a visionary bioregional learning center that developed new ecological wastewater treatment technologies. The Institute was greatly influenced by Fuller, and key member Greg Watson continues to advance the World Game at Schumacher Center for a New Economics. New Alchemist Jay Baldwin wrote one of the best books on Fuller, BuckyWorks, and developed innovative geodesic dome designs. John Todd was a key contributor to the founding of the Balaton Group with Dana Meadows, with its initial vision of a global network of bioregional learning centers (https://lnkd.in/gidWM-M6). 🐞 Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, Austin, Texas (1975-present) founded by Pliny Fisk III continues to be a highly influential bioregional learning center and is credited with significant contributions to the LEED Green Building standard. Pliny Fisk was mentored by Fuller for 5 years as he was forming the Center, and joined us at Buckminster Fuller Institute's 40th Anniversary Party in December. In our next post, we'll explore the BFI Design Lab's strong engagement with bioregional resilience and regeneration. Photo: Buckminster Fuller (center) inside the New Alchemy Pillow Dome in 1982 (at age 87) with (l-r) Nancy Jack Todd, Liz Fial, Jay Baldwin and John Todd. Credit: Greg Watson.

Thanks John Fullerton for sharing this remarkable quote. A couple of weeks ago our Executive Director Dr. Stuart Cowan spoke at the pathbreaking Earth Commons conference along with Lynne Twist and many others devoted to large scale systems change towards planetary thriving. Lynne continues to do critically important work with Pachamama Alliance and Amazon Sacred Headwaters alongside Uyunkar Domingo Peas, Bill Twist, and Atossa Soltani. Back in 1976 at Marin Civic Center north of San Francisco, Lynne heard Buckminster Fuller speak in front of 2,000 people, and he later served as an important mentor as she launched The Hunger Project. "Fuller said because we as a huge family are doing so much more with so much less that we now clearly live in a world in a profound sufficiency. He used the word sufficiency and he said that means we move across this threshold, a you or me understanding of the world. Either you make it at my expense or I make it at your expense because there's not enough for both of us. To, on the other side of this threshold, a you and me world, where you and I can both make it and at no one’s expense. He said, this is a transformation that's so profound. So earth shattering mind-boggling that it will take 50 years, from 1976, 50 years for us to fully realize it [2026]. That there is enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life, and we no longer need to be rival risks or competing with each other for scarce resources. He said it'll take 50 years because all the institutions of humankind are rooted in a you or me understanding of the world. On this side of the threshold, the economy clearly rooted, invented from a you or me understanding of the world. Understanding the world is scarce resources. But he said also, governance is rooted in a you or me understanding of the world. Education rooted in a you or me understanding of the world. Politics. He went, he went through all the institutions of humankind … He said, it'll take 50 years for us to realize that our institutions are rooted in an inaccurate understanding of the world. And they will become so dysfunctional in 50 years that we cannot fix them. We will not be able to repair them. We will not be able to prop 'em up any longer. They will disintegrate before our very eyes, every single institution of humanity. And that's when we will need to reinvent, recreate new institutions for the human family that are rooted in the truth of the more accurate understanding of the world, the context of sufficiency." Fuller was a radical, a visionary, an edgewalker, a trickster, and a shaman. He always asked us to start with the largest possible design context: the universe. And use our pattern harvesting abilities as a species to create local sufficiency, moving from weaponry to livingry. We are called to move to a larger context of transformation.

Our Executive Director Dr. Stuart Cowan spoke recently with Samantha Power about Bioregional Finance and bioregioning more broadly alongside their amazing host Matthew Monahan. Her landmark paper on this topic with Leon Seefeld will be published in May, along with the launch of the BioFi Project, proudly supported by the Buckminster Fuller Institute Design Lab. This work exemplifies Buckminster Fuller Institute's commitment to open innovation systems that can strategically address planetary thriving. It is a trim tab allowing very small investments in the design and launch of bioregional financing facilities to eventually influence the flow of trillions of dollars of capital in a decentralized way across hundreds of bioregions and large landscapes. Bioregional trusts, venture studios, investment companies, and banks can harness "cascading benefits" (Fuller) using a systemic and regenerative investment lens aligned with a participatory process of bioregional regeneration planning. Samantha Power's design template for bioregional financial facilities is the most significant advance in regenerative finance since John Fullerton's 2015 paper on Regenerative Capitalism. Now on to widespread implementation with the dozens of bioregions already requesting such facilities!

"Planetary regeneration requires collaborating in emergent, experimental, evolutionary and eco-systemic ways." We agree Tijn Tjoelker and thanks for mentioning Buckminster Fuller Institute in your excellent post!

Please join us for an in-person event celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Buckminster Fuller Institute on December 15th in San Francisco! We are thrilled to invite you to the Gray Area Theater in the historic Mission District in beautiful San Francisco, California, USA. This milestone celebration promises to be an unforgettable experience filled with inspiration, creativity, innovation, and special guests! We will celebrate forty incredible years of Buckminster Fuller Institute and the transformative work underway heading into our fifth decade! We'll also have updates on current projects to reach 100 million life-centered designers, regenerate bioregions, center indigenous knowledge in design, transform financial systems, engage with regenerative AI, uplift and build capacity for design scientists, support large-scale ecological restoration and more. The event will feature sustainable local food served throughout the evening and a cash bar. 5:00-6:15pm: Arrive, Connect, Light Food 6:15-7:00pm: Presentations from BFI Community, Updates, and Performances 7:00-8:00pm: Community Connection Time, Surprises, End of Formal Program 8:00-9:00pm: Music and Mingling for those wishing to stay later This event is designed and produced by BFI and our partners Design Science Studio and habRitual. It will feature many artists, designers, and leaders from our community! Please RSVP using the link below and spread the word! https://lnkd.in/gmy7QRhP

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Standards Association has launched Planet Positive 2030. This could greatly accelerate shared aspects of regenerative technologies, balancing the power of interoperability with the need for endless bioculturally specific local variation. Not easy, worth working on, chime in with the link below. Maike Luiken 🍁 Mila A. John C. Havens IEEE Planet Positive 2030 "brings together a global, diverse, open community of experts to help chart a path for all people to achieve a flourishing future for 2030 and beyond. The first step to imagine this future is to recognize the planet Earth and all its ecosystems form a part of all of us. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food earth provides comprise who we are. We cannot continue to treat planet Earth as a 'resource' from which to be extracted - planet Earth is finite with finite resources. We should, instead, prioritize the health of our planetary biosphere and recognize that we humans are a part of the system, not above it or outside it."

Delighted to share the news that Buckminster Fuller Institute Board Chair Tom Chi has closed a $375 million venture fund through At One Ventures! The fund will back early-stage companies with disruptive technologies that help humanity become a net positive to nature.

We're pleased to share a comprehensive Buckminster Fuller Institute update from one of our community events in August. See below for details on our current work: BFI Design Lab (Open innovation ecosystems for planetary transition) * Massive Action (100 million life-centered designers) * Bioregional Regeneration (Design science at regional scale) * Gaia Consortium (Regenerative AI) * Large-Scale Water Cycle and Ecological Restoration * Ecosystem Restoration Communities * Bioregional Digital Twin * Indigenous Knowledge Systems Labs * Design Science Consulting Regenerosity Design Science Studio Fiscal Sponsorship Program Store and Memberships Thanks to Stephen Bau for putting this Substack post together! Please consider joining as a member, donating, or connecting with these efforts! https://lnkd.in/gAwh5HFg

Join the Virtual Salon September 26th! Buckminster Fuller Institute and the BFI Design Lab are delighted to be supporting the work of the amazing systemic designers and planetary visionaries Bruce Mau and Aiyemobisi Williams, who have both been deeply inspired by the life and vision of Buckminster Fuller. Their new initiative MASSIVE ACTION builds on many years of global experience at their renowned design agency Massive Change Network. MASSIVE ACTION is a global movement to tackle the world's most vexing problems and collectively design a better future for all of life. Its aim is to empower 100 million people with the tools of life-centered design to catalyze and accelerate positive change.