"Earth Turns to Gold in the Hands of the WISE"-Rumi
The Maine Path to Sustainable Living
I am assembling a team to enter the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. The draft on which we are presently working is below. There is a 1500 word limit with six sketches permitted. Comments are welcomed.
Best regards,
Leon Neihouse
The Maine Path to Sustainable Living
Draft of a Proposed Entry to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Contest
Submittal Group Coordinated by Leon Neihouse
09-10-08
In order to have a big dream come true, it is first necessary to dream big.
We dream of a world in which all people born into it are guaranteed birthrights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, health, shelter from the elements, fresh air, and clean water. The first three are beyond the purview of this contest but conditions can be initiated in the near term to provide for the latter four.
The first prerequisite is to develop a cost effective method for people to congregate in small communities that are self sufficient with respect to food, energy, and work. Buckminster Fuller, in his design and promotion of Old Man River City (OMRC), anticipated the need for communal living of this type. Added to this, Dickson Despommier maintains that vertical farms can provide nutritious food, a primary ingredient leading to good health. This entry integrates these city-farm elements into the volume production of a standard community patterned after a reduced size OMRC that has a micro vertical farm in its design.
A standard 30 to 40 home housing development, self-sufficient with respect to food and energy and containing work and office spaces for the homeowners, can be volume produced for urban, suburban, or country settings. One possible standard design, with a 10 million Cost Guesstimate (CG) to build a prototype, will be in the shape of a terraced tetrahedron with a greenhouse farm on the sun facing side and business spaces and condos on the other two sides. All homes will open outward to an exterior privacy patio and inward to a community center. The greenhouse will use terraced grow beds in a configuration starting at ground level and rising to a rooftop setting to grow vegetables, herbs, flowers, house plants, fruit, fish, and livestock (chickens, pigs, rabbits, goats, etc.) to provide all the basic food requirements.
So as to obvert the necessity of owning an automobile, shared transportation will be available. This will include a microbus making periodic trips from the community to shopping malls, an airport, a bus terminal, a train station, and entertainment venues. Residents can thus work, live, and play in a setting of energy and food independence, which features suggest a name of MicroFarm™ Independence Center for this community.
Funding for this sustainable living center will be derived from home sales, rental of office/work spaces, rental of rooms in a bed & breakfast format, and a micro shopping mall that would include an outlet to sell greenhouse food to both homeowners and the general public.
This Independence Center will be set up as a Community Investment Corporation (CIC) owned by the homeowners. In an ideal form, standard operating procedures in CICs organized on an international basis will permit easy homeowner transfer between CICs so as to permit individual homeowners to bond with others in a CIC suitable to their common life style.
A R&D/marketing organization named the MicroFarm™ Institute, with a prototype CG of three million, will not only teach the greenhouse design necessary for the efficient operation of the micro vertical farm in the Independence Center but also perform R&D into energy features such as insulation, below grade heat sources and sinks, wind generators, solar, and biomass designed for energy self sufficiency. Experiments in carbon dioxide levels, light type and intensity, organic nutrients delivered via a hydroponic and/or aeroponic process, temperature, and greenhouse moisture content will have a design objective to achieve maximum plant growth. Aquaponics and livestock interactions will be addressed under which air, water, and wastes are recycled so as to maintain a fresh air and clean water atmosphere in the Independence Center.
In addition to R&D, the Institute will offer tours showing the latest food and energy technologies, teach general organic greenhouse operation, and offer for sale to small farmers not only its own greenhouse design, which it is developing in conjunction with Perpetual Harvest Greenhouse Systems, but also greenhouse models provided by other companies. RainFresh Harvests is developing a model with the potential for organization in this manner. (Invitations have been sent to three other companies, which will be identified if and when they accept.)
The Institute will also promote franchise businesses in the spin off areas of organic grocery stores selling the output from the greenhouses as well as restaurants and motels that have greenhouses on the premises.
This is a “better mouse trap” so all we need now do is wait for the world to “beat a path to our door.” On the other hand, every MBA program in every College and University in the world maintains that, no matter how good the product, it is necessary to take a proactive approach to selling it. Therefore, an international marketing campaign will employ a cruise ship embarking on a world tour to showcase a standard model of both the Institute and the Independence Center.
This ship, named The Maine AEGIS, where AEGIS is an acronym for Amalgamated Entertainment, Games & International Shopping, will be patterned after Fuller's floating Triton City except it will be designed for travel on the high seas and outfitted with greenhouses, penthouse and luxury staterooms, standard staterooms, crew quarters, a shopping section with retail outlets from world class companies, an entertainment section with state-of-the-art facilities, and a section featuring traditional carnival games and rides. A CG of 60 million will be required to refurbish an existing cruise ship for this function. A tour, with stops in ports around the world, will employ a combination rock concert and carnival atmosphere to attract people to the exhibits and will use the lion’s share of profits to subsidize the construction of a land based cruise ship, Institutes, and Independence Centers in the host country to create a network that will shield their poor and homeless from the effects of poverty.
Land based replicas of the cruise ship, at a prototype CG of 100 million, will establish a permanent base to subsidize the construction of Institutes and Independence Centers that will be devoted to providing health, housing, clean air, and fresh water to the poor and homeless in the outlying areas so as to provide a life style traditionally inaccessible to them.
A trimtab provision to start this process is to use the Grand Prize from this contest to subsidy publish a book entitled The Maine Path to Sustainable Living, which book will expand in depth and detail upon the cruise ship as well as prototypes built in Maine for a land based replica of the cruise ship, the Institute, and the Independence Center.
A startup campaign will be initiated by sending a courtesy copy of the book to:
1. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors inviting them to capitalize the cruise ship and the first franchisee in businesses for a land based replica of the cruise ship, the Institute, and the Independence Center.
2. A representative sample of those on the World’s Richest List inviting them to purchase a penthouse or luxury stateroom on the cruise ship and at the land based replica.
3. Major singing groups, movie stars, world class athletes, talk show hosts, game show hosts, and cooking show hosts inviting them to make guest appearances on the cruise ship and at the land based replica.
4. World class companies with high end retail products inviting them to establish an outlet on the cruise ship and land based replica.
A three year goal will be to simultaneously fund and construct the cruise ship and prototypes for its land based replica, a R&D/marketing Institute, and an Independence Center. This will be the starting point for a 20 year goal to build 100 of the land based replicas; 1,000 of the Institutes; and 10,000 of the Independence Centers but only one of a cruise ship in a global-traveling showcase role to introduce this project.
The term 'new urbanism' could be used for this design so as to emphasize the distinction between this and past approaches to agrarian communities. In other words, the Independence Centers are not 'rural' communities with dispersed architecture but a new urban environment -a microcity- that achieves sustainability not merely by what its structures are made out of or what forms of energy it uses but, much more fundamentally, by the logistical efficiencies of an optimized urban habitat and lifestyle - which some will argue was the real point of Fuller's OMRC concept.
As a final point, a 20 year goal to build 10,000 communities might seem grandiose to some but in that the communities will be providing food, energy, and housing to just over one million people, or much less than one tenth of one percent of the global population, it is a very modest objective. This does, however, demonstrate a second trimtab principle - to the extent that people are interested in this self-sufficient food and energy approach to sustainable living, but not in the terraced, pyramid shape of this specific proposal, others will be quick to offer competitive designs, limited only by the almost unlimited imagination of real estate architect-engineers.
Best regards,
Leon Neihouse
The Maine Path to Sustainable Living
Draft of a Proposed Entry to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Contest
Submittal Group Coordinated by Leon Neihouse
09-10-08
In order to have a big dream come true, it is first necessary to dream big.
We dream of a world in which all people born into it are guaranteed birthrights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, health, shelter from the elements, fresh air, and clean water. The first three are beyond the purview of this contest but conditions can be initiated in the near term to provide for the latter four.
The first prerequisite is to develop a cost effective method for people to congregate in small communities that are self sufficient with respect to food, energy, and work. Buckminster Fuller, in his design and promotion of Old Man River City (OMRC), anticipated the need for communal living of this type. Added to this, Dickson Despommier maintains that vertical farms can provide nutritious food, a primary ingredient leading to good health. This entry integrates these city-farm elements into the volume production of a standard community patterned after a reduced size OMRC that has a micro vertical farm in its design.
A standard 30 to 40 home housing development, self-sufficient with respect to food and energy and containing work and office spaces for the homeowners, can be volume produced for urban, suburban, or country settings. One possible standard design, with a 10 million Cost Guesstimate (CG) to build a prototype, will be in the shape of a terraced tetrahedron with a greenhouse farm on the sun facing side and business spaces and condos on the other two sides. All homes will open outward to an exterior privacy patio and inward to a community center. The greenhouse will use terraced grow beds in a configuration starting at ground level and rising to a rooftop setting to grow vegetables, herbs, flowers, house plants, fruit, fish, and livestock (chickens, pigs, rabbits, goats, etc.) to provide all the basic food requirements.
So as to obvert the necessity of owning an automobile, shared transportation will be available. This will include a microbus making periodic trips from the community to shopping malls, an airport, a bus terminal, a train station, and entertainment venues. Residents can thus work, live, and play in a setting of energy and food independence, which features suggest a name of MicroFarm™ Independence Center for this community.
Funding for this sustainable living center will be derived from home sales, rental of office/work spaces, rental of rooms in a bed & breakfast format, and a micro shopping mall that would include an outlet to sell greenhouse food to both homeowners and the general public.
This Independence Center will be set up as a Community Investment Corporation (CIC) owned by the homeowners. In an ideal form, standard operating procedures in CICs organized on an international basis will permit easy homeowner transfer between CICs so as to permit individual homeowners to bond with others in a CIC suitable to their common life style.
A R&D/marketing organization named the MicroFarm™ Institute, with a prototype CG of three million, will not only teach the greenhouse design necessary for the efficient operation of the micro vertical farm in the Independence Center but also perform R&D into energy features such as insulation, below grade heat sources and sinks, wind generators, solar, and biomass designed for energy self sufficiency. Experiments in carbon dioxide levels, light type and intensity, organic nutrients delivered via a hydroponic and/or aeroponic process, temperature, and greenhouse moisture content will have a design objective to achieve maximum plant growth. Aquaponics and livestock interactions will be addressed under which air, water, and wastes are recycled so as to maintain a fresh air and clean water atmosphere in the Independence Center.
In addition to R&D, the Institute will offer tours showing the latest food and energy technologies, teach general organic greenhouse operation, and offer for sale to small farmers not only its own greenhouse design, which it is developing in conjunction with Perpetual Harvest Greenhouse Systems, but also greenhouse models provided by other companies. RainFresh Harvests is developing a model with the potential for organization in this manner. (Invitations have been sent to three other companies, which will be identified if and when they accept.)
The Institute will also promote franchise businesses in the spin off areas of organic grocery stores selling the output from the greenhouses as well as restaurants and motels that have greenhouses on the premises.
This is a “better mouse trap” so all we need now do is wait for the world to “beat a path to our door.” On the other hand, every MBA program in every College and University in the world maintains that, no matter how good the product, it is necessary to take a proactive approach to selling it. Therefore, an international marketing campaign will employ a cruise ship embarking on a world tour to showcase a standard model of both the Institute and the Independence Center.
This ship, named The Maine AEGIS, where AEGIS is an acronym for Amalgamated Entertainment, Games & International Shopping, will be patterned after Fuller's floating Triton City except it will be designed for travel on the high seas and outfitted with greenhouses, penthouse and luxury staterooms, standard staterooms, crew quarters, a shopping section with retail outlets from world class companies, an entertainment section with state-of-the-art facilities, and a section featuring traditional carnival games and rides. A CG of 60 million will be required to refurbish an existing cruise ship for this function. A tour, with stops in ports around the world, will employ a combination rock concert and carnival atmosphere to attract people to the exhibits and will use the lion’s share of profits to subsidize the construction of a land based cruise ship, Institutes, and Independence Centers in the host country to create a network that will shield their poor and homeless from the effects of poverty.
Land based replicas of the cruise ship, at a prototype CG of 100 million, will establish a permanent base to subsidize the construction of Institutes and Independence Centers that will be devoted to providing health, housing, clean air, and fresh water to the poor and homeless in the outlying areas so as to provide a life style traditionally inaccessible to them.
A trimtab provision to start this process is to use the Grand Prize from this contest to subsidy publish a book entitled The Maine Path to Sustainable Living, which book will expand in depth and detail upon the cruise ship as well as prototypes built in Maine for a land based replica of the cruise ship, the Institute, and the Independence Center.
A startup campaign will be initiated by sending a courtesy copy of the book to:
1. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors inviting them to capitalize the cruise ship and the first franchisee in businesses for a land based replica of the cruise ship, the Institute, and the Independence Center.
2. A representative sample of those on the World’s Richest List inviting them to purchase a penthouse or luxury stateroom on the cruise ship and at the land based replica.
3. Major singing groups, movie stars, world class athletes, talk show hosts, game show hosts, and cooking show hosts inviting them to make guest appearances on the cruise ship and at the land based replica.
4. World class companies with high end retail products inviting them to establish an outlet on the cruise ship and land based replica.
A three year goal will be to simultaneously fund and construct the cruise ship and prototypes for its land based replica, a R&D/marketing Institute, and an Independence Center. This will be the starting point for a 20 year goal to build 100 of the land based replicas; 1,000 of the Institutes; and 10,000 of the Independence Centers but only one of a cruise ship in a global-traveling showcase role to introduce this project.
The term 'new urbanism' could be used for this design so as to emphasize the distinction between this and past approaches to agrarian communities. In other words, the Independence Centers are not 'rural' communities with dispersed architecture but a new urban environment -a microcity- that achieves sustainability not merely by what its structures are made out of or what forms of energy it uses but, much more fundamentally, by the logistical efficiencies of an optimized urban habitat and lifestyle - which some will argue was the real point of Fuller's OMRC concept.
As a final point, a 20 year goal to build 10,000 communities might seem grandiose to some but in that the communities will be providing food, energy, and housing to just over one million people, or much less than one tenth of one percent of the global population, it is a very modest objective. This does, however, demonstrate a second trimtab principle - to the extent that people are interested in this self-sufficient food and energy approach to sustainable living, but not in the terraced, pyramid shape of this specific proposal, others will be quick to offer competitive designs, limited only by the almost unlimited imagination of real estate architect-engineers.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Josh on -
So what do you need help with? (i.e.-Graphics, text, formatting, photos, videos, web?)
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Permalink Reply by Leon Neihouse on -
Josh said:So what do you need help with? (i.e.-Graphics, text, formatting, photos, videos, web?)
I am looking for help in several areas: drafting a coffee table book to be entitled The Maine Path to Sustainable Living (the 1500 word Buckminster Fuller Challenge proposal is essentially written), preparing graphics (both six sketches for the proposal and many sketches and pictures for the book), and assembling business plans to go into the book.
MicroFarm™ Enterprises is now my sole proprietorship and it will continue to be that way until there is a reason to incorporate but I plan to offer the above participants a vested interest in this business, if and when it is incorporated. If they so desire, I will enter into contracts with all participants that will outline the below stock ownership provisions.
MicroFarm™ Enterprises incorporation will occur if any of three events take place:
1. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Grand Prize is won.
2. A standard publisher accepts The Maine Path to Sustainable Living for publication.
3. Sophisticated Investors agree to purchase 5% of the company for $100,000, which money would be used to subsidy publish the book.
MicroFarm™ Enterprises would then be incorporated with 2,000 shares of stock with 500 placed with the Dirigo Energy Institute (www.lowearthorbitnow.org), 500 with the Phoenix Development Society (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ThePhDSociety/), 100 distributed to those discussed above, 800 reserved for sale to sophisticated investors to acquire seed money for the four companies discussed in the BF Challenge proposal, and 100 reserved for sale to subsidy publish the book. If the book were to be published under points one or two, these 100 shares would be added to the 100 shares listed above and distributed to the participants.
MicroFarm™ Enterprises would own 50% of the stock of corporate headquarters for MicroFarm™ Independence Centers, MicroFarm™ Institutes, The AEGIS Cruise Ship, and land-based AEGIS Cruise Ships with the remaining 50% owned by investors and employees. Each of these four would be franchise companies with each franchisee capitalized in a completely independent fashion such that neither MicroFarm™ Enterprises nor the corporate headquarters of each business would necessarily own any of the franchisee’s stock.
I am working under a goal to have identified by the end of the year four greenhouse models, a Maine hosting location for each, and Maine locations on which prototypes for the MicroFarm™ Institute, the MicroFarm™ Independence Center, and a land based replica of the Maine AEGIS™ can be built. The 2009 months of January, February, March, and April will then be devoted to drafting The Maine Path to Sustainable Living, to be ready for publishing in May.
The number of shares will be negotiated but, as coordinator of this project, I will receive at least one more share than anyone else. Five have agreed to assist in this manner and I hope to recruit up to 30 more before the end of the year.
Let me know if this is of interest to anyone on this forum and the expertise they would bring to the table.
For my part, I have a degree in Physics, a MBA, served seven years in the U.S. Navy during which time I qualified as Chief Engineer of a nuclear powered submarine, worked seven years in commercial nuclear power - two years of which were spent as the Site Manager for Combustion Engineering during the startup of Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant, and employed 31 years as a Project Manager in the Bath, Maine Office of the Naval Architect & Marine Engineering firm of John J. McMullen & Associates, now Alion Science & Technology. I am now semi-retired, working two days per week at Alion, wit
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Permalink Reply by Lookaloud on -
Have you consider the pro and cons of self publishing?
http://www.lulu.com/
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Permalink Reply by Leon Neihouse on
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Lookaloud said:Have you consider the pro and cons of self publishing?
http://www.lulu.com/
Yes. That is my first and third choice - If I should win the Grand Prize, I would use the money to subsidy publish the book. If I do not win, which is the the most probable result, I will send query letters to conventional book publishers. If no one is interested, I will try to capitalize MicroFarm Enterprises to such an extent that I can subsidy publish the book.
Best regards,
Leon Neihouse
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Permalink Reply by Josh on
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I am in the printing/photo/graphics business. Oh, and we do website stuff too! If you have gathered all the information that you want published, and all I have to do is format it and make it look pretty, I may be able to help out.
I need details of what you want your final product to be (i.e.- hardcover vs softcover, page dimensions with bleeds and margins, b/w vs. color, which program you are doing your editing in, how many pages, what font, what font size, number of columns per page, etc.) How big are the graphics you are wanting to use, (you need at least a 300dpi image for print), and what file format are they in (.jpg, .gif. pdf. etc). I also need to know what KIND of graphics they are, i.e.- line drawing, web graphics, photographs, autocad, etc. Don't forget to make sure your images are in CMYK (print) not RGB (computer monitor).
Oh by the way, I recommend OpenOffice which is a free open source software suite that rivals Microsoft Office (ugh)... this way we can both be using the same program. Using the same software will make future communications flow smoothly.
From their website...
"OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. "
Let me know if you have questions or problems with installation or setup... just think of me as a "Digital handyman".
Going back to the book, I have other paying gigs to work on at the moment, but I am sure we can find a way to justify the time spent on this setup. This is a worthwhile idea and I would like to help out. Just don't ask me to write the business plan. lol. My job is to make pixels jump and dance around while mixing and merging them in order to create an image pleasant to the eye. 8-)
Once we have the design setup, I have found that using a .pdf is the easiest way to make sure that everyone can open and read your information. EVERY printer on the planet can read a .pdf. If you are doing web entries for the contest, I would recommend using either a .pdf ready for print, or an interactive .pdf. I doubt you will need an interactive one, but it may be a gimmick to get your entry more attention. Just ask if you need one. If they require mailed in submissions, you can send it to me to print for you... in a pdf of course.
Ok last questions... when are the deadlines for the contest, and when would you prefer to have the book in print-ready format?
Do you have enough to chew on for a bit? (ok, that was the last question... I'm going home and going to bed now. HA!)
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Permalink Reply by Leon Neihouse on
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Josh said:I am in the printing/photo/graphics business. Oh, and we do website stuff too! If you have gathered all the information that you want published, and all I have to do is format it and make it look pretty, I may be able to help out.
I need details of what you want your final product to be (i.e.- hardcover vs softcover, page dimensions with bleeds and margins, b/w vs. color, which program you are doing your editing in, how many pages, what font, what font size, number of columns per page, etc.) How big are the graphics you are wanting to use, (you need at least a 300dpi image for print), and what file format are they in (.jpg, .gif. pdf. etc). I also need to know what KIND of graphics they are, i.e.- line drawing, web graphics, photographs, autocad, etc. Don't forget to make sure your images are in CMYK (print) not RGB (computer monitor).
Oh by the way, I recommend OpenOffice which is a free open source software suite that rivals Microsoft Office (ugh)... this way we can both be using the same program. Using the same software will make future communications flow smoothly.
From their website...
"OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. "
Let me know if you have questions or problems with installation or setup... just think of me as a "Digital handyman".
Going back to the book, I have other paying gigs to work on at the moment, but I am sure we can find a way to justify the time spent on this setup. This is a worthwhile idea and I would like to help out. Just don't ask me to write the business plan. lol. My job is to make pixels jump and dance around while mixing and merging them in order to create an image pleasant to the eye. 8-)
Once we have the design setup, I have found that using a .pdf is the easiest way to make sure that everyone can open and read your information. EVERY printer on the planet can read a .pdf. If you are doing web entries for the contest, I would recommend using either a .pdf ready for print, or an interactive .pdf. I doubt you will need an interactive one, but it may be a gimmick to get your entry more attention. Just ask if you need one. If they require mailed in submissions, you can send it to me to print for you... in a pdf of course.
Ok last questions... when are the deadlines for the contest, and when would you prefer to have the book in print-ready format?
Do you have enough to chew on for a bit? (ok, that was the last question... I'm going home and going to bed now. HA!)
The first course of action is to submit the Buckminster Fuller challenge, which is due the end of October and for which I do not need asssitance in the areas you discuss above.
The plan is to then work on the book draft, with a goal to have it ready by the end of April. I will get assistance from others to prepare four business plans and draft the book, with pictures. I will then need the type of assistance you are offering with my goal to have a book ready to go to subsidy publishers (perhaps LuLu) by the middle of June. Of course, if the query letters work and the book gets published by a conventional publisher, they would do all of this and I would not then need this type of assistance.
In any event, if you give me your name and business email I will be happy to keep you informed of the progress of this initiativ
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