Design science is “the effective application of the principles of science to the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the Earth’s finite resources meet the needs of all of humanity without disrupting the ecological processes of the planet.” 
A blog about resilience in social ecological systems by members of Resilience Alliance (RA), a research network of scientists and practitioners from many disciplines who collaborate to explore the dynamics of social-ecological systems. Key RA concepts include resilience, the adaptive cycle, and panarchy. The RA works to develop a practical theoretical foundation for a sustainable civilization.
Profound insights John Thackara on the need to be cognizant of unintended consequences and awakening from the dreamtime of the industrial economy... 
The Idea Index serves as a tool to educate, network, and help solve problems. As an educational tool, the Index is full of hopeful, exciting ideas and solutions to pressing global problems. As a networking tool, the Index allows site visitors to contact the project leaders, leave a constructive and/or encouraging comment and connect with one another. It presents a fully searchable database of socially-responsible initiatives, in all stages of development, in need of further funding and support. During the last quarter century, Buckminster Fuller’s concept of Design Science has come to mean different things to different people, evolving in the process into a potent combination of method, metaphor and myth.
The purpose of this document is to refocus the concept, address it in the context of some reflections about design in general, and link Design Science to the sustainability challenge facing humanity today.
More about Michael Ben-Eli's work: http://www.sustainabilitylabs.org Hardin Tibbs reflects on his influence from Buckminster Fuller, saying that he gave people the license to think "Big" and how he started his own journey along such lines. 
We will not transition successfully to a restorative economy until systems thinking becomes as natural, for millions of people, as riding a bike. That's a big ask. How do we get from here, to there?
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is one of the more important projects to address this task - and serving on the jury was by far the hardest work I did last year. Our task was easily enough stated: select "a bold, visionary, but tangible initiative that has significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems". To that headline - a challenge on its own - was appended a daunting set of criteria for the assessment of each entry: Did it apply a whole systems approach to all facets of the design and development process? Is the project ecologically responsible? Is it feasible - not just in an ideal world, but using current technology and existing resources.? Can the project's claims be verified by rigorous empirical testing? And, finally, is the project replicable? Can it scale and be adapted to a broad range of conditions? 
Integrity, to Buckminster Fuller, represented the degree to which any design or system actively enhances the regenerative processes that support life on Earth. Thirty years ago, he wrote the cautionary tale Grunch of Giants to warn of the immediate dangers posed by the lack of integrity within the “invisible, abstract, and completely ruthless” empire of corporations that control the world’s finances. Dubbing this corrupt system the Gross Universal Cash Heist (GRUNCH), he argued that, as a non-living entity, it was incapable of recognizing how its legal mandate to maximize monetary gains by socializing risks and privatizing profits were in direct opposition to the long-term requirements for human survival. The Savory Institute - winners of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge - holds the key to reversing desertification, which is possibly the greatest contributor to man-made climate change. To find out more about this extraordinary company, visit their website at http://www.savoryinstitute.com. Learn how to apply greener practices to engineering problems with the Autodesk® Sustainability Workshop for students: http://www.autodesk.com/sustainabilityworkshop
A sustainable alternative to the beef factory-farming model follows in the footsteps of conservationist pioneer Allan Savory. The recent winner of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize, Savory developed the Holistic Management grazing technique during his time as a researcher and farmer in Southern Africa in the 1980s. By getting grazing cattle to stay in larger, tight herds, Savory was able to restore grassland vitality and increase grass biodiversity. Deep chewing of plant roots, paired with the repeated soil chipping of hooves, caused dormant seeds to germinate and water to penetrate below the surface. According to Shannon Horst, CEO and co-founder of the Savory Institute, ranchers can consistently double, and even quadruple livestock capacity over time. An update on the MIT CityCar, part of the "Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems" project that won the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge: http://challenge.bfi.org/winner_2009
A Future for Design Science?
http://ir.lib.cyut.edu.tw:8080/bitstream/310901800/9176/1/5.27-42.pdf
In a world seemingly committed to more complex systems, design science should be embracing the ‘sciences of complexity’. Otherwise, its usefulness will be limited to those ‘tame’ problems amenable to its current methods, unable to address the ‘wicked’ problems which increasingly populate our world. There is already a large body of practical experience with complexity theory on which design scientists can draw. Placing complexity theory in an evolutionary context, based on General Evolution Theory (GET), could be the next frontier for design science. GET enriches time perspectives and ‘patterns’ in complexity theory, both elements useful to design practice. A particular benefit of Complexity and General Evolution Theories is that they span all dynamic systems, and thereby diminish the disciplinary barriers between the physical, biological and social sciences which have for so long bedevilled practice. The methodological issues in broadening design science to incorporate reductivist, systemic, and evolutionary perspectives are considered, and a meta-methodology based on Participatory Action Research is proposed as a way to integrate these very different epistemologies. |
A free online resource for learning about the principles and process of comprehensive, anticipatory design science... 
A collection of resources concerning ways of designing for the unexpected... 
The Idea Index serves as a tool to educate, network, and help solve problems. As an educational tool, the Index is full of hopeful, exciting ideas and solutions to pressing global problems. As a networking tool, the Index allows site visitors to contact the project leaders, leave a constructive and/or encouraging comment and connect with one another. Via Anne Caspari "Design Matters: Doing Better with Less" is a short but powerful animated story about using design to create sustainable wealth, and it provides essential insights into the future of business and innovation. In order to have a significant effect on vital environmental and social issues, people need to acquire the skills that will allow them to act as planners and participants, rather than as spectators in the defining and solving of problems. If environmental education is to be relevant and effective, it needs to balance its approach between activities which alert people to the dangers of a reckless attitude towards the environment, and activities which that inform people how to design and implement positive alternative solutions A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns – and this harmony will, I think, be found to have a nature of analogy. A bad solution acts within the larger pattern the way a disease or addiction acts within the body. A good solution acts within the larger pattern the way a healthy organ acts within the body. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. The Fuller World. Design Scientist. (NET Series F-155, no. 1) Ann Arbor, Michigan: National Educational Television. December 1963 Original Format 1 videoreel... A beautiful animation describing the Savory Institute's techniques for reversing desertification, which is possibly the greatest contributor to man-made climate change. To find out more about this winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, see http://www.savoryinstitute.com
Designing a World that Works for All
http://www.designsciencelab.com/resources/designing-a-world.pdf
This report, on the work of the 2005-2010 Design Science/Global Solutions Labs held at the United Nations, UN International School, and Chestnut Hill College, reveals what happens when solid methodology meets creative minds. Over the past six years, hundreds of people, most aged 15 to 26 (but a few as young as 55), have come together to look at the issues of hunger, poverty, education, health care, energy, water, women’s rights, employment, the environment and other topics to find ways to make the wold work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time. We offer these creative solutions to you in this book. —Medard Gabel 
The key is how grazing animals are managed. For according to Shannon Horst, CEO and co-founder of the Savory Institute, an organization dedicated to restoring the world's grasslands through Holistic Management, ranchers can consistently double, and even — depending on the condition of the land and adherence to the practices — quadruple livestock capacity over time. An animated video revealing the direction of innovation and what it means for businesses and sustainable design. The video offers a simple method for companies to align business and environmental goals and a new way to think about products. It also makes the case that any sustainable business must be built on harvesting more wealth out of fewer resources. 
The annual Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge awards $100,000 to a visionary design project, one that can be inserted into a failing system to do no less than accelerate the transition to an equitable and sustainable future. In his book on the condition of man, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Fuller wrote that: “If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat … makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top.” Today more than ever, it has become clear that much of the technology, design, and systems in use in our everyday lives — from our transportation system and our power grid to the way we build our homes and think about sanitation — is a sea of piano tops. Fuller called for a different approach to problem solving, which he called “comprehensive anticipatory design science,” that utilized systems thinking and scientific rigor with faithful reliance on nature’s underlying principles. |
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