Saturday 12 November 2011, 8AM - 7PM
Sunday 13 November 2011, 8AM - 3PM
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center
20 N. Main St
Providence, RI 02906
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In one of Buckminster Fuller's most audacious claims he
proposed that "Nature's Coordinate System" could be understood
by investigating the closest packing of spheres and a complex of
related geometrical structures. The theme of this year's Design
Science Symposium at RISD will be to investigate that claim
and the many variations of it that have developed over the 35 years
since the publication of Fuller's ideas in his magnum opus, Synergetics.Please join the Synergetics Collaborative, RISD/Brown faculty, students and others as we explore design, Nature, problem-solving, and understanding how our world can be made to work for 100% of humanity at this symposium in November 2011.
About 1917, I decided that nature did not have separate, independently operating departments of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, ethics, etc. Nature did not call a department heads' meeting when I threw a green apple into the pond, with the department heads having to make a decision about how to handle this biological encounter with chemistry's water and the unauthorized use of the physics department's waves. I decided that it didn't require a Ph.D. to discern that nature probably had only one department and only one coordinate, omnirational, mensuration system.
I determined then and there to seek out the comprehensive coordinate system employed by nature. The omnirational associating and disassociating of chemistry—always joining in whole low-order numbers, as for instance H2O and never HpiO—persuaded me that if I could discover nature's comprehensive coordination, it would prove to be omnirational despite academic geometry's fortuitous development and employment of transcendental irrational numbers and other "pure," nonexperimentally demonstrable, incommensurable integer relationships.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, 410.01-411.23 Nature's Coordination
The initial self-and-other spherical associability produced first, associability; next, triangulation as structure; and then, tetrahedron as system.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, 480.00-488.00 Tetrahedron Discovers Itself and Universe
Closest Packing of Spheres, Isotropic Vector Matrix (IVM), Vector Equilibrium (VE), Quanta Modules, Cosmic Hierarchy, Great Circles; Other models of "Nature's coordinate system"; Industrial design; ecological materials and solutions; design principles; biomimicry; cross-disciplinary innovation; geometry and its relationship to design principles and the natural world; work relating to the Design Science Approach of Buckminster Fuller and Arthur Loeb.
The registration fee is $250 (please pay with a check or cash at the door), $30 for students (RISD students & faculty enter at no charge but registration is required). Please fill out the on-line registration form. Please mail checks to Synergetics Collaborative; 240 Copley Road; Upper Darby, PA 19082-4016.
The tentative schedule for the 2011 Design Science Symposium is now available at http://SynergeticsCollaborative.org/schedule.nov.2011.pdf.
The 2011 Design Science Symposium Exhibit will run from 6-13 November 2011 at the Waterman Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI, 02903 USA. To submit art work, please follow the instructions in the 2011 Design Science Symposium Exhibit: Call for Artists.
The Calendar for the Exhibit Follows:
Bio and Description Material Due 24 October 2011 Work Received 24–28 October 2011 Exhibit Dates 6–13 November 2011 Opening Reception 11 November 2011 Removal of Work 13 November 2011
Visit the Synergetics Collaborative on-line. The Edna Lawrence Nature Lab at Rhode Island School of Design uniquely integrates a natural history collection, a lending library of natural specimens and a studio environment. With its growing collection of more than 80,000 natural history objects, books, visual resources, microscopes and a digital work station, the Nature Lab serves as an invaluable research facility for the RISD community. In 2003, The Nature Lab accepted the Arthur Loeb Design Teaching Collection. This hands-on collection of hundreds of three-dimensional polyhedra and two-dimensional patterns inspires students and faculty to examine nature's fundamental responses to design problems.
Visit the Nature Lab online.