Design Science Lab - Press

Introduction

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:18:55 -0500

Please find a selection of press articles about the Design Science Lab below. Please contact us if you know of any press articles that we may have missed.

Thinking inside the box

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:01:52 -0500

By Rebecca Bowe in Vol. 13 / Iss. 31 of Mountain Xpress, February 2007

A volunteer-based community group has partnered with Progress Energy to make its energy-conservation program happen. Jonah Butcher, board chair of the Clean Air Community Trust, is heading up the Energy in a Box program, which came out of last summer’s Design Science Lab.

The idea, says Butcher, was to assemble a basic tool kit that could help people save energy. “We’re looking at things like, if you walked into someone’s home and had an hour, what’s the best thing you could do to save energy? In other words, the really low-hanging fruit,” Butcher explains. Though the group had sufficient interest and volunteer support to implement the program, they lacked funds for materials. Then a light bulb lit up, so to speak, at Progress Energy’s open house on the proposed Woodfin power plant last month.

DSL Update Event in Asheville, Jan 2007

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:58:30 -0500

» Click to read about the DSL Update event in Asheville

Design Science Lab's map showcases world problems, possible solutions

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:50:41 -0500

By Dale Neal, published in citizen times, January 2007

ASHEVILLE — Hands-on learning is one thing, but students can actually put their feet on this lesson plan.

It's a map of the world that can be unfolded across a gymnasium floor, which lets students amble around the globe for a better understanding of problems facing the planet.

The Dymaxion Map and other projects will be showcased from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Jubilee!, 46 Wall St. Asheville residents can get a better idea of the big picture and problems facing the local community and possible solutions generated by last summer's Design Science Lab at UNC Asheville.

The Dymaxion map was invented by the visionary thinker Buckminster Fuller, who taught at the experimental Black Mountain College outside Asheville in the late '40s. Fuller's ideas have seen a renaissance in Asheville with a Design Science Lab last summer. More than 30 people gathered at UNC Asheville for 10 days of systematic study devised by Fuller to help individuals come up with solutions to community and global problems.

"I think there's a real buzz in town that individuals and groups can make positive change by slowly doing projects and committing to doing something personally," said Suzanne Watson, who attended the Lab.

Together with Marnie Muller and Mark Hanff, Watson formed the nonprofit Earth Voyage to bring the experience of Fuller's Dymaxion Map to middle school students in the area.

Watson said the Thursday showcase at Jubilee! will discuss making the Design Science Lab a permanent think tank in Asheville, "more focused on local issues."

Robin Cape, an Asheville City Council member who participated in the lab, said she would like to see the event cut back from 10 days to allow more people to participate.

"What was useful was learning how we can approach problem solving using Buckminster Fuller's techniques. I do think it’s a good process," she said.

Paradigm shift -- Design Science Lab points way to curing the world's (and WNC's) ills

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:37:49 -0500

By Hal L. Millard in Vol. 13 / Iss. 2 of Mountain Xpress, August 2006

We are the world: Jim Hausman explains global interconnectedness using Buckminster Fuller's innovative Dymaxion AirOcean World Map. photo by Mariah Grant

Did you know that simply by replacing your home's incandescent bulbs with compact-fluorescent lights you can single-handedly remove hundreds of pounds of carbon from our air each year, and keep hundreds of pounds of coal from being burned by our local power plants? Or that using grass- and plant-covered "green roofs" in downtown Asheville could greatly diminish the runoff that helps create the nonpoint-source pollution threatening our watersheds?

To hear participants in the latest Design Science Lab talk, we are spiraling toward calamity -- but only if we fail to act on often simple, sensible and cost-effective solutions that are literally at our fingertips. Many successful strategies are already being employed elsewhere in the world, and we can accomplish a great deal simply by accessing online information available to any curious Google monkey (see sidebar, "Brave New Ideas").

Parsons Faculty Selected For UN Design Science Lab

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:26:10 -0500

By Parsons Public Relations, published on the Parsons website, July 2006

Douglas Diaz, a full-time faculty member at Parsons, has been selected to participate in the annual Design Science Lab programs taking place at the United Nations in New York City and the University of North Carolina this summer.

The Design Science Lab programs develop solutions to global and local problems through a design and planning methodology often referred to as design science, is a problem-solving approach entailing a rigorous, systematic study of the deliberate ordering of the components in the universe. This methodology is inspired by the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, the late 20th-century inventor, philosopher, and designer.

The New York program aims to devise solutions to the world’s most pressing problems as outlined by the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. Participants in the program will work collaboratively to design solutions and then present them to U.N. officials at the program's conclusion.

The Asheville, NC, program will focus on regional issues and include a systems-based perspective of the relationship between the issues facing the Southern Appalachian region and the global problems affecting us all. Solutions developed to address regional challenges will be models for global applications.

» original article

Astral projector -- David McConville merges science, art, education and media

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:19:34 -0500

By Hal L. Millard in Vol. 12 / Iss. 39 of Mountain Xpress, April 2006

The first striking thing about 34-year-old wunderkind David McConville as he answers the door to his West Asheville studio is not so much the shaved head and black goatee but the T-shirt proclaiming, "I'm an idiot."

In fact, his nickname is "Id." Which is funny, really, because judging by his two-page curriculum vitae (which would give most folks his age -- or any age, for that matter -- a distinct inferiority complex), McConville is anything but an idiot. In reality, the moniker stems not from his lack of brainpower but because he's a bass player -- typically the low man on the musical totem pole.

Inside McConville's studio, what immediately grabs the eye is a 15-foot inflatable dome made of black rip-stop nylon. But again, what's most impressive is what lies within -- an "immersive environment" of multimedia sight and sound that can transport visitors anywhere from the molecular level to the farthest reaches of the universe. (One could also throw a wicked awesome rave in there, if only the dome were a bit bigger.)

Inside, McConville shows this reporter and an 8-year-old visitor named Ethan several comfy, reclining beanbag chairs, a dome projector custom-fitted by Elumenati (the Minnesota-based company McConville co-founded), and a computer that spews out two shows produced elsewhere. The first, an animated short called Molecularium, was designed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to teach youngsters ages 5-8 the basics of the atomic realm. And Tours of the Universe, a real-time software program designed by the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, uses constantly updated mapping data from NASA to convey viewers to just about anyplace imaginable -- even going back to prehistory.

Want to know what the night sky looked like above Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia or the pyramids of Giza at any given day and time?

Design Science Lab, the Catalyst of a Powerful Youth Movement

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:16:22 -0500

By Zoe Richards, Grade 11, United Nations International School, published in Trimtab, 2005

To me, the Design Science Summer Lab is a powerful youth action movement. I am proud to have been a part of its first summer session. This lab far exceeded my expectations. I thought that this program would simply allow me to meet like-minded youth activists and discover organizations that I could volunteer in. I did not anticipate to be faced with a more urgent agenda, to develop strategies to halve world hunger and poverty.

This program encouraged me, inspired me, and sparked my creative process. Before participating in the Design Science Lab, I had many hopes for the future of the world, but I did not have a vehicle to solve world problems. By the end of this program, I learned how I can use the Design Science methodology to troubleshoot, and problem-solve the world’s largest issues. The Lab’s orientations session, icebreakers, and workshops brought myself and my classmates at UNIS together with a diverse group of college students and adult activists. We worked side by side each day, in small teams, to research and diagnose the hunger and poverty problems in different countries and then made presentations to the entire group about our findings. Before conducting this research, I knew little about the individual struggles of each developing nation. Africa for example, has remained one of the pluralized continents in the world, and its issues are continuously referred to as collective and ambiguous. It is for this reason that I decided to research the environmental issues of the continent. Researching these issues clarified these ambiguities for me, and I now recognize the diverse difficulties that individual African countries face, and the overall catalysts of world hunger and poverty problems.

As a result of my participation in the Design Science Lab, I founded a group at my school called AVIFAUNA. In this group, I and several other lab-veterans facilitate discussion about global issues and train others to use the Design Science methodology. Through research and Fuller’s techniques, we are working towards developing strategies to solve Millennium Development Goal Five, to achieve global primary education by 2015. In time, AVIFAUNA will establish itself on a greater scale, as a non-profit organization. We are currently working on launching a website. We will promote Fuller’s techniques and the strategies we develop at the "Season on Nonviolence" Youth Conference at the United Nations early next year.

The Design Science Lab requires several commitments. Foremost, it requires the courage, compassion and hope of its participants. As a wise proverb explains: "A sword is useless in the hands of a coward." The sword represents the Design Science methodology. With courage, compassion and hope the design science revolution will define a bright future.