Madrid, Feb. 14^th

WASTE TO RESOURCES- URBAN PROTOTYPE PLAZA ECOPOLIS led by ecosistema urbano is proud to announce our submission to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Named “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine, the Challenge is an annual international prize program that awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

We are thrilled to be a part of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge review process, which brings together influential design science leaders such as Josè Zaglul, Vandana Shiva, Danny Hillis, William McDonough, John Thackara and Hunter Lovins.

We entered this competition because of its reputation as the most prestigious Prize concerning social issues.

The project aims to provide a sustainable solution for water treatment in urban contexts, transforming the waste waters of buildings into purified water that then can be reused for different purposes. The water purification system works by natural means (macrophites). The main idea is to fit this solution into the residual or spare city spaces (roundabouts) where the water treatment system can be placed.

We know 40% of the water consumed in the world is used in building facilities. We believe it is important to develop technologies and products as small scale solutions applicable locally for both: improving the management of this scarce resource and second but also relevant, raising awareness of the problem.

According to the UN, 12% of Europe is at risk of turning into desert and between 30-60% of Spain is at immediate risk from desertification. Regardless of the present situation, there are few projects to implement new water management models or promote the creation of a new culture of the water. This project aims to promote a more respectful attitude towards environment and especially towards water.

Architecture is related to every human and conditions people’s quality of life. From that point of view we consider relevant to develop innovations which directly affect the quality of life and promote environmental consciousness.

For more info on the project, you can visit us here

Our project, along with 118 other entries are published in the Idea Index on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge website. We encourage Rivas, Madrid and other European  cities to participate in our project by joining BFI’s online community and submitting your comments on our page.

We expect to be a serious contender for the award, and winning the Challenge  would be a tremendous honor, but we are also very excited about the opportunity to become part of a network that is advancing and accelerating the practice of comprehensive, whole systems thinking and design to develop the kind of high impact global solutions we so desperately need. We look forward to an engaging review process, and should our project win, we plan to leverage the $100k to promote the implementation of similar schemes in other cities and communities all over Europe.

This money would allow to further develop technical solutions as well as creating  a webpage and designing a whole media campaign so that anyone could find very clear information on how to implement this solution through a Do-it–yourself brochure.

Ecosistema urbano can offer their technical support and expertise for:

– Designing specific solutions for particular sites

– Advising administrations and companies who want to incorporate this solution into their own water management systems.

– Creating a creative commons platform to launch the project allowing any community from anywhere in the world to implement it by themselves.

This money would be a great push forward for the project to spread worldwide. We are proud to be affiliated with this important Challenge.

Stay tuned!!