Design Revolution -

A Network of Farmers, Engineers, & Supporters Building the Global Village Construction Set

Joshua Arnow — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:47:29 -0800

The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is an open technological platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small civilization with modern comforts. (Website)

A modern, comfortable lifestyle relies on a variety of efficient Industrial Machines. If you eat bread, you rely on an Agricultural Combine. If you live in a wood house, you rely on a Sawmill. Each of these machines relies on other machines in order for it to exist. If you distill this complex web of interdependent machines into a reproduceable, simple, closed-loop system, you get these Key Features:

Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with technical contributors.

Low-Cost - The cost of making or buying our machines are, on average, 8x cheaper than buying from an Industrial Manufacturer, including an average labor cost of hour for a GVCS fabricator.

Modular - Motors, parts, assemblies, and power units can interchange, where units can be grouped together to diversify the functionality that is achievable from a small set of units.

User-Serviceable - Design-for-disassembly allows the user to take apart, maintain, and fix tools readily without the need to rely on expensive repairmen.

DIY - (do-it-yourself) The user gains control of designing, producing, and modifying the GVCS tool set.

Closed Loop Manufacturing - Metal is an essential component of advanced civilization, and our platform allows for recycling metal into virgin feedstock for producing further GVCS technologies - thereby allowing for cradle-to-cradle manufacturing cycles

High Performance - Performance standards must match or exceed those of industrial counterparts for the GVCS to be viable.

Flexible Fabrication - It has been demonstrated that the flexible use of generalized machinery in appropriate-scale production is a viable alternative to centralized production.

Distributive Economics - We encourage the replication of enterprises that derive from the GVCS platform as a route to truly free enterprise - along the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy.

Industrial Efficiency - In order to provide a viable choice for a resilient lifestyle, the GVCS platform matches or exceeds productivity standards of industrial counterparts.

Blue Ventures: Winner of the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Joshua Arnow — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:41:05 -0800

Video - Website

Blue Ventures (BV), led by Ashoka Fellow Alasdair Harris Ph.D, has developed a high-leverage scalable model that enables impoverished tropical fishing communities in the western Indian Ocean to quickly and dramatically raise their incomes while protecting the biodiversity of their coastal waters through the creation of community-run Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The approach integrates advanced marine conservation science with capacity-building and sound knowledge of fisheries economics in order to provide the necessary skills, incentives, and partnerships that can effect lasting change.

The core of the concept involves determining the recovery period for a fishery that is headed toward collapse, and convincing the fishers to stop fishing periodically to allow the target population to rebound, so that they can benefit from greatly increased fish catches on a sustainable basis. This translates to significantly higher income along the entire supply chain and the preservation of traditional coastal livelihoods as well as marine biodiversity. The recovery method has been scientifically verified and has been met with great local enthusiasm. Within 4 years the strategy has spread to dozens independent fishing villages, which have together created over 100 short term fisheries reserves along several hundred kilometres of Madagascar’s coastline. Management models have since diversified to create the largest community-managed MPA in the entire Indian Ocean.

As a social enterprise BV is imbued with an entrepreneurial community-led spirit that distinguishes it from most other conservation NGOs. Once established these MPAs stand on their economic merits rather than requiring continuous support from outside NGOs. Most of BV’s scientific research is funded by award-winning eco-tourism expeditions and supported by teams of volunteer researchers. As distinct from conventional ‘top down’ outsider approaches to conservation, community engagement and empowerment is the centerpiece of the BV strategy. This has resulted in local citizens taking control of the decisions that affect them and leading grassroots educational efforts that then help other villages replicate the model.

BV is also supporting a full range of community-based economic development initiatives. These include providing educational scholarships for illiterate children, building a reproductive health and family planning clinic now targeting communities in over 50 villages, developing water and sanitation programmes, pioneering alternative sources of income for women through sustainable aquaculture (such as commercial-scale community-managed sea-cucumber and seaweed farming) and developing an ambitious community-owned eco-tourism enterprise. These efforts extend far beyond the typical confines of science-based marine conservation but are critical to ensuring the long-term success and sustainability of BV’s strategy for grassroots conservation. BV’s comprehensive systems approach to conservation assumes that the survival of a natural habitat and the people whose lives depend on it are inseparable.

Already replicating its work in southeast Asia and the Caribbean, and advising governments and communities across several Indian Ocean countries, Blue Ventures’ innovative approach to coastal conservation and development is showing significant potential to improve the lives of millions of people throughout the coastal tropics who rely on threatened marine resources for their daily subsistence.

More Info

Groasis Waterboxx Enables Trees to Survive in Arid Regions

Joshua Arnow — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:07:02 -0700

Using the principles of biomimicry, the Groasis Waterboxx enables plants to establish themselves and survive even in the most arid regions of the world, just the way nature does it. Pieter Hoff, founder of AquaPro and inventor of the product, hopes to use the new device to combat hunger, desertification, and climate change.

Hoff has developed a round, 20-inch-wide container crafted from polypropylene that is placed over a two small seedlings. The container is a resevoir for enough water for a full year of micro-drip irrigation. The chamber, which is designed to prevent evaportation, collects rainwater but also maximizes the formation of dew droplets. In some climates dew may be the only frequent source of plant moisture. The Waterboxx design effectively capatures and tranfers condensation into the water reservoir. A wick goes into the ground beneath the box, slowly dripping 50 ml of water to the plant’s root system everyday.

As the plant grows, its roots reach deeper and deeper in the ground, eventually finding their own water source. If all goes well the box can be removed after one year.

Popular Science selected The Groasis Waterboxx as as one of the top 10 inventions of 2010.

These three videos explain how it works very well:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Groasiswaterboxx#p/u/3/lGnhZEye-to

http://www.youtube.com/user/Groasiswaterboxx#p/u/13/mimakdbmd_k

http://www.youtube.com/user/Groasiswaterboxx#p/u/28/HRF2bUBPA90 READ MORE »

Operation Hope: Winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Joshua Arnow — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 09:27:16 -0700

The Winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuler Challenge is Operation Hope, submitted by Allan Savory on Behlalf of the Africa Center for Holistic Management

"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."

ENTRY APPLICATION: PDF

WEBSITE: Africa Center for Holistic Management

WEBSITE: Savory Institiute

VIDEO: Lecture at Trinity College,Dublin (1hr)

SLIDE SHOW: Project team in the field in Africa

Critical Need Being Addressed

"Viewed holistically biodiversity loss/desertification/climate change are one issue not three. Without reversing desertification, climate change cannot be adequately addressed. This project has demonstrated that livestock can reverse desertification, even during droughts, over the largest areas of the Earth’s land – the grasslands and savannas."

Description of Initiative

"Our work established a previously unsuspected cause of desertification – that humans of all ages and cultures make decisions using the same core decision framework. Flaws in this universal framework made world-wide desertification inevitable. Modifications, explained in "Holistic Management" A New Framework for Decision Making" Savory & Butterfield Second Edition 1999, Island Press, make reversing desertification possible."

"This work, begun in the early 60s gave erratic results. Since 1984 when the decision-making piece of the puzzle fell into place, as long as the process is followed results in restored grasslands have been consistent and can be guaranteed."

"In this particular project ACHM has demonstrated on 6500 acres of grasslands in Zimbabwe the process of reversing desertification. Livestock have increased 400% using holistic planned grazing and we now enjoy open water, water lilies and fish a kilometer above where water has been known before in the dry season. The livestock are integrated with Africa’s big game avoiding competition and wildlife are on the increase. Currently, we can barely keep pace with grass growth even in dry years. This is greatly influencing scientists, NGO’s and pastoralists from all over Africa." READ MORE »

Why does engineering/math/science education in the US suck?

Joshua Arnow — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:54:21 -0700

I don't think the reasons elucidated below by Kathi Sierra are limited to the United States. Her blog Creating Passionate Users is excellent! The Graphics are a riot. JA

Why does engineering/math/science education in the US suck?

If you studied math, science, or engineering at a four-year college in the US, much of what you learned is useless, forgotten, or obsolete. All that money, all that time, all that wasted talent. If all we lost were a few years, no big deal. But the really scary part is that we never learned what matters most to true experts in math, science, and engineering. We never really learned how to DO math, science, and engineering.

Toward the end of his life, legendary mathematician Jacques Hadamard asked 100 of the top scientists of his time how they did whatever it was that they did (math, physics, etc.) Hadamard's survey found a massive disconnect between how we teach math and science and how mathematicians and scientists actually work. The majority of his contemporaries apparently claimed that using the logical, left-brain symbols associated with their work was NOT how they did their work. These were simply the tools they used to communicate it. What they used to do the works was much... fuzzier. Intuition. Visualization. Sensation (Einstein talked of a kinesthetic element). Anthropomorphizing. Metaphors.

We are in sooooo much trouble.

What experts use to do their work are the things we don't teach. We focus almost exclusively on how to talk about the work. Obviously this doesn't mean nobody learns to do it... we have plenty of expert engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who become great either in spite of faulty teaching or because they lucked out and had excellent, clueful instructors and mentors. But we also hear more and more teachers, experts, and employers railing against the sorry state of our advanced technical educations today. The problem is, many of these same teachers, experts, and employers have a tough time articulating what's wrong, let alone how to fix it.

And what do we do to try and improve things? We just do MORE of what's wrong. We redouble our efforts. We drill and test students even harder in facts and rote memorization. We work and test them even harder on using the tools for communication (e.g. code) rather than the tools for thought (e.g. intuition, visualization, etc.)

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster ("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

Three of the many people who've been leading the charge on this are Roger Schank, Dan Pink (his "Whole New Mind" book is a must-read), and computing/learning guru Alan Kay. One of my favorite Alan Kay notions is something like this, "If you want to be a better programmer, take up the violin." He claims that the more time he spends playing music, the fresher and better his approaches to engineering become. He's an outspoken critic of engineering students focusing too early in their education, because he believes that with a more liberal arts education, you get metaphors and ways of thinking and seeing that are vital to your later engineering work.

I'll end this with two quotes:

From Jason Fried:
"Hire curious people. Even if they don't have the exact skill set you want, curious, passionate people can learn anything."

And from Jacques Hadamard:
" Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition."

If intuition is the heart of what true experts do, then shouldn't we be trying to teach that? Or at the least, stop stifling and dissing it? And yes, I do believe that we can teach and inspire all those fuzzy things including intuition and even curiosity. But we are running out of time.

[UPDATE: Martin Polley brought up the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, and if you haven't seen it already--I urge you to check it out ASAP!

Mark Fowler was surprised that I didn't bring up the book What the Best College Teachers Do, and I can't believe I left it out of the post. I believe it is the single best book on helping someone learn. When we had our most recent author's bootcamp, it was the one book we gave to all attendees. Thanks Mark.

I highly recommend the comments to this post -- they're insightful on all sides, agreement and disagreement and all points in between. And before you tell me I'm advocating for throwing out fundamentals, memorization, facts, logic, etc... PLEASE look again at my venn diagram ; ) This is about brain balance, and addressing much more of the brain than just the narrow channels that are the parts of the brain that actually "talk." ]

Posted by Kathy on November 2, 2006 READ MORE »

Fuel Cell Breakthrough: The Bloom Box

Joshua Arnow — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:47:45 -0800

Watch CBS News Videos Online READ MORE »

World's First Full Scale Floating Wind Turbine

Joshua Arnow — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:20:59 -0700

Via: www.statoilhydro.com

StatoilHydro has decided to build the world’s first full scale floating wind turbine, Hywind, and test it over a two-year period offshore Karmøy. The The company is investing approximately 400 million NOK. Planned startup is autumn 2009. HyWind is based on floating concrete constructions familiar from North Sea oil installations. In this way we exploit the wind where it is strongest and most consistent — far out to sea. The project combines known technology in an innovative way. A 2.3 MW wind turbine is attached to the top of a so-called Spar-buoy, a solution familiar from production platforms and offshore loading buoys. READ MORE »

Milan World Expo 2015: Feeding the Planet, energy for Life

Joshua Arnow — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:23:54 -0700

Via: Abitare - international design magazine

by Herzog & de Meuron, Jacques Herzog
London School of Ecomics, Ricky Burdett
Stefano Boeri Architetti, Stefano Boeri
William McDonough + Partners, William McDonough

1.
Over the past few months we have worked with EXPO SpA, the local institutions and the BIE (Bureau International des Expositions) to create a revolutionary new concept of the world exposition. We are convinced that a visionary and successful EXPO has to abandon the outmoded idea of an exposition built around complex systems of representation and gigantic architectural monuments which often have no real purpose after the event. Instead EXPO 2015 will be remembered for giving visitors a direct and immediate experience of all aspects of the question of food. It will be an EXPO that embodies its theme-Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life-directly within its own space, with none of the usual simulations and documentation that can easily be found today on any computer. Secondly, it will be an EXPO that overturns the whole concept of monumentality: in place of giant structures (like the Eiffel Tower of Paris 1898), Milan will build a new landscape of monumental lightness and natural beauty. An environment that reflects the environmental sustainability, technical precision and haunting beauty of Venice’s winding alleys, Leonardo’s canals and the open countryside of rice fields and vineyards. The EXPO we envisage will be a Planetary Botanical Garden open to the citizens of Milan and the world. A place for a fresh encounter between farming and the city that will feed Milan literally, spiritually and intellectually. A vast agrofood park built on an orthogonal grid, surrounded by water ways and punctuated by striking landscape architecture. READ MORE »

Biennial World City Prize

Joshua Arnow — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:53:45 -0700

The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize is a biennial international award to recognise individuals and organisations that have made outstanding contributions to the creation of vibrant, liveable and sustainable urban communities around the world. It seeks to recognise individuals and organisations responsible for urban initiatives that display foresight, good governance or innovation in tackling the many urban challenges faced by cities. These urban initiatives can include (but are not limited to) urban planning projects, urban policies and programmes, urban management, as well as applied technology in urban solutions.

These urban initiatives should incorporate principles of sustainable development and demonstrate an ability to bring social, economic and environmental benefits in a holistic way to communities around the world. The Prize will also place an emphasis on practical and cost effective solutions and ideas that can be easily replicated across cities.

Through this prize, Singapore hopes to facilitate the sharing of best practices in urban solutions among cities and spur further innovation in the area of sustainable urban development.

The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Laureate will be presented with an award certificate, a gold medallion and a cash prize of S$300,000, sponsored by Keppel Corporation.

The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize is named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, who currently holds the position of Minister Mentor. Mr Lee is instrumental in developing Singapore into a distinctive, clean and green garden city in a short span of a few decades. Under his leadership, the adoption of strategic land use, transport and environmental policies and programmes have helped Singapore to develop into a liveable city with a high quality living environment, in tandem with rapid economic growth. READ MORE »

FAB.REcology by Neri Oxman Wins First Earth Awards

Joshua Arnow — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:10:57 -0700

NEW YORK, Jan 13, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- On January 12, MIT fellow Neri Oxman was named winner of the first The Earth Awards. TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair and Datin Azrene Abdullah presented the award to Oxman in recognition of her groundbreaking project FAB.REcology, which combines principals of biomimicking with the design and construction of built environments. Master of ceremonies Charlie Rose interviewed all ten finalists in Philip Johnson's iconic Four Seasons Restaurant before the winner was named. The event united some of the world's most influential environmentalists, architects and media to form an elite Selection Committee who chose Oxman. Committee members present included Paola Antonelli, Adam Bly, David Buckland, Antonio de la Rua, Scott Hahn, Peter Head, Graham Hill, Michael McDonough, Barry Malebuff, Sergio Palleroni, John Picard, Suzanne Trocme, Dilys Williams and Kenneth Yeang. Organizers conducted a global search for products and concepts that are sustainable, innovative and essential to improving basic quality of life. The winner and finalists will meet with joint venture companies in the hopes of generating commercial opportunities. The Earth Awards are an initiative of ecoStyle Project established by the Malaysian Government, whose support underpins the government's focus on sustainability in its national policy and development plans. The event was jointly produced by NYC Inc., kontentreal, and IMG Fashion, and sponsored by Tourism Malaysia. Representing Malaysia were daughter of the Prime Minister Datin Azrene Abdullah, Princess Myra Madihah, Ambassador Hamidon & Counsel General Zamruni. Prime Minister Dato' Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi noted, It's an honor to be part of this event, and I applaud The Earth Awards for fostering a critical dialogue and spirit of innovation in response to the global energy crisis. Finalist projects Engaged Offsets, Iluma, and Open Blue Sea Farms were recognized with honorable mention. The top ten also included 12 Climate Entrepreneurs, Earth Markets, Folded Bamboo + Paper Houses, R3, ROSS, and Warning Bulb.

Via: materialecology