Summary
The phrase ‘The Venus Project’ refers to a 501c3 organization but carries additional meanings which include:
- The Venus Project ‘Center’ in Venus, Florida, United States
- the body of work of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows
- a brand of sustainability media
- a philosophy, system of thought, value system, models of reality, etc.
- a collective of people who advocate all of the above
The Venus Project as a brand was incorporated in 1994 by Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows and converted to a 501c3 nonprofit in 2018. The Venus Project continued under the direction of Jacque Fresco until he died in 2017 at age 101. The Venus Project now maintains a board of directors who continue to evolve a design response to emerging global circumstances.
The organizational continuity of The Venus Project dates as far back as 1971. Its conceptual origins date back to the 1960s, but its philosophy traces back much earlier. For a more extensive history of Fresco’s work, visit his page on the Jacque Fresco Foundation website.
Recent history
Since 2008, The Venus Project has presented a leading vision of sustainability. The Great Recession of 2008 provoked much demand for economic alternatives. Fresco and Meadow’s years of preparation converged with the hard work of several filmmakers to popularize The Venus Project to a global audience. Since then, Fresco’s work has influenced a wide range of movements, communities, and industrial sectors. The Venus Project has since undergone extensive exploration of global energy and materials constraints and now builds upon the foundational work of Jacque Fresco to confront the challenges of global overshoot.
The Venus Project by Jacque Fresco
From 1976 to 2017, Jacque Fresco was assisted by Roxanne Meadows to amass a large body of work consisting of thousands of lectures, drawings, schematic illustrations, and tabletop models representing an alternative global socioeconomic system. For decades, Fresco promoted his work through several books, videos, articles, publicity, and public lectures.
From 1980 to 2006, Fresco and Meadows constructed 10 buildings in a rural community called Venus in Florida, United States. This was a testing ground and demonstration site of several architectural methods. Tours of this location remain open to the public.
Sociocyberneering
Prior to The Venus Project, Fresco directed Sociocyberneering Inc. a non-profit organization he founded in 1971 in Miami, Florida. During this time Fresco refined the bulk of the ideas that he would later present as The Venus Project. Fresco’s visionary concepts were responsive to the era’s energy, materials, and global population, and offered a pragmatic response to socio-economic realities. Foreseeing an unsustainable world, he championed sustainable resource management, addressing diverse challenges like consumerism, waste, war, poverty, and politics. His forward-thinking ideas aimed to prevent the trajectory leading to the current situation depicted by the BAU2 scenario in the Limits to Growth.
Fresco history
Jacque Fresco was born in New York City in 1916. The hardships of the Great Depression had a profound impact on his social conscience, and this experience gave purpose to his later work. From a young age, he gained experience in diverse industries and positions. In Los Angeles, CA, Fresco worked primarily in the aerospace industry, drafting and designing aircraft and parts. He further worked in architecture, focusing on prefabricated residential and industrial structures. He maintained a passion for basic science and conducted many experiments in his laboratory. As an industrial designer, he pursued many inventions for household items and appliances, medical equipment, entertainment, transportation, and manufacturing. In Miami, FL, Fresco later extended his services to the human domain by offering psychological consultations. This and other diverse experiences, such as interactions with indigenous tribes and dealing with various dysfunctional organizations and groups, provided early exposure to problems associated with human factors and became a central focus of his work. By the 1970s, Fresco shifted his time to near-exclusive dedication to global redesign.
