Buckminster Fuller

For the EP by Nerina Pallot, see Buckminster Fuller EP.
Buckminster Fuller
Born Richard Buckminster Fuller
(1895-07-12)July 12, 1895
Milton, Massachusetts,
United States
Died July 1, 1983(1983-07-01) (aged 87)
Los Angeles, United States
Education Harvard University (attended)
Occupation Designer, author, inventor
Spouse(s) Anne Hewlett (m. 1917)

Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (/ˈfʊlər/; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983)[1] was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer and inventor.

Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Fuller was the second World President of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.[2]

Guinea Pig B:

I AM NOW CLOSE TO 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed.
— Bucky Fuller, 1983[3]

Biography

As a young man

Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews, and also the grand-nephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. He attended Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending much of his youth on Bear Island, in Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine, he had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction necessary to imagine that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point, or that an imperfectly drawn line with an arrow on the end was meant to stretch off to infinity. He often made items from materials he brought home from the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats. By the age of 12 he had "invented" a 'push pull' system for propelling a row boat through the use of an inverted umbrella connected to the transom with a simple oar lock which allowed the user to face forward to point the boat toward its destination. Later in life Fuller took exception to the term "invention".

Years later, he decided that this sort of experience had provided him with not only an interest in design, but also a habit of being familiar with and knowledgeable about the materials that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a machinist's certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade.[4]

Education

Fuller attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and after that began studying at Harvard University, where he was affiliated with Adams House. He was expelled from Harvard twice: first for spending all his money partying with a vaudeville troupe, and then, after having been readmitted, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment.[4]

Wartime experience

Between his sessions at Harvard, Fuller worked in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill, and later as a laborer in the meat-packing industry. He also served in the U.S. Navy in World War I, as a shipboard radio operator, as an editor of a publication, and as a crash rescue boat commander. After discharge, he worked again in the meat packing industry, acquiring management experience. In 1917, he married Anne Hewlett. During the early 1920s, he and his father-in-law developed the Stockade Building System for producing light-weight, weatherproof, and fireproof housing—although the company would ultimately fail[4] in 1927.[5]

Depression and epiphany

Buckminster Fuller recalled 1927 as a pivotal year of his life. His daughter Alexandra had died in 1922 of complications from polio and spinal meningitis[6] just prior to her fourth birthday.[7] Fuller dwelled on her death, suspecting that it was connected with the Fullers' damp and drafty living conditions.[7] This provided motivation for Fuller's involvement in Stockade Building Systems, a business which aimed to provide affordable, efficient housing.[7]

In 1927 Fuller, then aged 32, lost his job as president of Stockade. The Fuller family had no savings to fall back upon, and the birth of their daughter Allegra in 1927 added to the financial challenges. Fuller was drinking heavily and reflecting upon the solution to his family's struggles on long walks around Chicago. During the autumn of 1927, Fuller contemplated suicide, so that his family could benefit from a life insurance payment.[8]

Fuller said that he had experienced a profound incident which would provide direction and purpose for his life. He felt as though he was suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a white sphere of light. A voice spoke directly to Fuller, and declared:

From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.[9]

Fuller stated that this experience led to a profound re-examination of his life. He ultimately chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."[10]

Speaking to audiences later in life, Fuller would regularly recount the story of his Lake Michigan experience, and its transformative impact on his life.[7] Historians have been unable to identify direct evidence for this experience within the 1927 papers of Fuller's Chronofile archives, housed at Stanford University. Stanford historian Barry Katz suggests that the suicide story may be a myth which Fuller constructed later in life, to summarize this formative period of his career.[11]

Recovery

In 1927 Fuller resolved to think independently which included a commitment to "the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more." By 1928, Fuller was living in Greenwich Village and spending much of his time at the popular café Romany Marie's,[12] where he had spent an evening in conversation with Marie and Eugene O'Neill several years earlier.[13] Fuller accepted a job decorating the interior of the café in exchange for meals,[12] giving informal lectures several times a week,[13][14] and models of the Dymaxion house were exhibited at the café. Isamu Noguchi arrived during 1929—Constantin Brâncuși, an old friend of Marie's,[15] had directed him there[12]—and Noguchi and Fuller were soon collaborating on several projects,[14][16] including the modeling of the Dymaxion car based on recent work by Aurel Persu.[17] It was the beginning of their lifelong friendship.

Geodesic domes

Fuller taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina during the summers of 1948 and 1949,[18] serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. There, with the support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a project that would make him famous: the geodesic dome. Although the geodesic dome had been created some 30 years earlier by Dr. Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was awarded United States patents. He is credited for popularizing this type of structure.

One of his early models was first constructed in 1945 at Bennington College in Vermont, where he frequently lectured. In 1949, he erected his first geodesic dome building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. It was 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter and constructed of aluminium aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in the form of an icosahedron. To prove his design, Fuller suspended from the structure's framework several students who had helped him build it. The U.S. government recognized the importance of his work, and employed his firm Geodesics, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes for the Marines. Within a few years there were thousands of these domes around the world.

Fuller's first "continuous tension – discontinuous compression" geodesic dome (full sphere in this case) was constructed at the University of Oregon Architecture School in 1959 with the help of students.[19] These continuous tension – discontinuous compression structures featured single force compression members (no flexure or bending moments) that did not touch each other and were 'suspended' by the tensional members.

Best-known work

For half of a century, Fuller developed many ideas, designs and inventions, particularly regarding practical, inexpensive shelter and transportation. He documented his life, philosophy and ideas scrupulously by a daily diary (later called the Dymaxion Chronofile), and by twenty-eight publications. Fuller financed some of his experiments with inherited funds, sometimes augmented by funds invested by his collaborators, one example being the Dymaxion car project.

World stage

The Montreal Biosphère by Buckminster Fuller, 1967

International recognition began with the success of huge geodesic domes during the 1950s. Fuller lectured at NC State University in Raleigh in 1949, where he met James Fitzgibbon, who would become a close friend and colleague. Fitzgibbon was director of Geodesics, Inc. and Synergetics, Inc. the first licensees to design geodesic domes. Thomas C. Howard was lead designer, architect and engineer for both companies.

Fuller began working with architect Shoji Sadao[20] in 1954, and in 1964 they co-founded the architectural firm Fuller & Sadao Inc., whose first project was to design the large geodesic dome for the U.S. Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal.[20] This building is now the "Montreal Biosphère".

From 1959 to 1970, Fuller taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU). Beginning as an assistant professor, he gained full professorship in 1968, in the School of Art and Design. Working as a designer, scientist, developer, and writer, he lectured for many years around the world. He collaborated at SIU with the designer John McHale. In 1965, Fuller inaugurated the World Design Science Decade (1965 to 1975) at the meeting of the International Union of Architects in Paris, which was, in his own words, devoted to "applying the principles of science to solving the problems of humanity." Later in his SIU tenure, Fuller was also a visiting professor at SIU Edwardsville, where he designed the dome for the campus Religious Center.[21]

Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity. He hoped for an age of "omni-successful education and sustenance of all humanity." Fuller referred to himself as "the property of universe" and during one radio interview he gave later in life, declared himself and his work "the property of all humanity". For his lifetime of work, the American Humanist Association named him the 1969 Humanist of the Year.

In 1976, Fuller was a key participant at UN Habitat I, the first UN forum on human settlements.

Honors

Fuller was awarded 28 United States patents[22] and many honorary doctorates. In 1960, he was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal from The Franklin Institute. Fuller was elected as an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1967, on the occasion of the 50th year reunion of his Harvard class of 1917 (from which he was expelled in his first year).[23][24] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968.[25] In 1968 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1970. In 1970 he received the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects. He also received numerous other awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him on February 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan.

Last filmed appearance

Fuller's last filmed interview took place on April 3, 1983, in which he presented his analysis of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers as a unique embodiment of the structural principles found in nature. Portions of this interview appear in I Build the Tower, a documentary film on Rodia's architectural masterpiece.

Death

Gravestone (see trim tab)

Fuller died on July 1, 1983, 11 days before his 88th birthday. During the period leading up to his death, his wife had been lying comatose in a Los Angeles hospital, dying of cancer. It was while visiting her there that he exclaimed, at a certain point: "She is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up, suffered a heart attack, and died an hour later, at age 87. His wife of 66 years died 36 hours later. They are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Philosophy and worldview

The grandson of Unitarian minister Arthur Buckminster Fuller,[26] R. Buckminster Fuller was also Unitarian.[27] Buckminster Fuller was an early environmental activist. He was very aware of the finite resources the planet has to offer, and promoted a principle that he termed "ephemeralization", which, in essence—according to futurist and Fuller disciple Stewart Brand—Fuller coined to mean "doing more with less".[28] Resources and waste material from cruder products could be recycled into making more valuable products, increasing the efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also introduced synergetics, an encompassing term which he used broadly as a metaphoric language for communicating experiences using geometric concepts and, more specifically, to reference the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components. Fuller coined this term long before the term synergy became popular.

Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally, and he explored principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.[29][30] He cited François de Chardenedes' opinion that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost out of our current energy "budget" (essentially, the net incoming solar flux), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon (US$300,000 per litre) to produce. From this point of view, its use as a transportation fuel by people commuting to work represents a huge net loss compared to their earnings.[31] An encapsulation quotation of his views might be, "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."[32][33][34]

Fuller was concerned about sustainability and about human survival under the existing socio-economic system, yet remained optimistic about humanity's future. Defining wealth in terms of knowledge, as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life," his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship Earth" caused him to conclude that at a certain time during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities was not necessary anymore. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. "Selfishness," he declared, "is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable.... War is obsolete."[35] He criticized previous utopian schemes as too exclusive, and thought this was a major source of their failure. To work, he thought that a utopia needed to include everyone.[36]

Fuller was influenced by Alfred Korzybski's idea of general semantics. In the 1950s, Fuller attended seminars and workshops organized by the Institute of General Semantics, and he delivered the annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1955.[37] Korzybski is mentioned in the Introduction of his book Synergetics. The two shared a remarkable amount of similarity in their formulations of general semantics.[38]

In his 1970 book I Seem To Be a Verb, he wrote: "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe."

Fuller wrote that the natural analytic geometry of the universe was based on arrays of tetrahedra. He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members required to stabilize an object in space. One confirming result was that the strongest possible homogeneous truss is cyclically tetrahedral.[39]

He had become a guru of the design, architecture, and 'alternative' communities, such as Drop City, the community of experimental artists to whom he awarded the 1966 "Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic" domed living structures.

Major design projects

The geodesic dome

Fuller was most famous for his lattice shell structures – geodesic domes, which have been used as parts of military radar stations, civic buildings, environmental protest camps and exhibition attractions. An examination of the geodesic design by Walther Bauersfeld for the Zeiss-Planetarium, built some 20 years prior to Fuller's work, reveals that Fuller's Geodesic Dome patent (U.S. 2,682,235; awarded in 1954), follows the same design as Bauersfeld's.[40]

Their construction is based on extending some basic principles to build simple "tensegrity" structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The geodesic dome was a result of Fuller's exploration of nature's constructing principles to find design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the Hugo Award-winning novel Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, in which a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of Manhattan, and it floats on air due to the hot-air balloon effect of the large air-mass under the dome (and perhaps its construction of lightweight materials).[41]

Transportation

Main article: Dymaxion car

The Omni-Media-Transport:
With such a vehicle at our disposal, [Fuller] felt that human travel, like that of birds, would no longer be confined to airports, roads, and other bureaucratic boundaries, and that autonomous free-thinking human beings could live and prosper wherever they chose.[42]
— Lloyd S. Sieden, Bucky Fuller's Universe, 2000

To his young daughter Allegra:
Fuller described the Dymaxion as a "zoom-mobile, explaining that it could hop off the road at will, fly about, then, as deftly as a bird, settle back into a place in traffic."[43]

The Dymaxion car, c.1933, artist Diego Rivera shown entering the car, carrying coat

The Dymaxion car was a vehicle designed by Fuller, featured prominently at Chicago's 1933-1934 Century of Progress World's Fair.[44] During the Great Depression, Fuller formed the Dymaxion Corporation and built three prototypes with noted naval architect Starling Burgess and a team of 27 workmen — using gifted money as well as a family inheritance.[45][46]

Fuller associated the word Dymaxion with much of his work, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension[47] to sum up the goal of his study, "maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input."[48]

The Dymaxion was not an automobile per se, but rather the 'ground-taxying mode' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive — an "Omni-Medium Transport" for air, land and water.[49] Fuller focused on the landing and taxiing qualities, and noted severe limitations in its handling. The team made constant improvements and refinements to the platform,[42] and Fuller noted the Dymaxion "was an invention that could not be made available to the general public without considerable improvements."[42]

The bodywork was aerodynamically designed for increased fuel efficiency and speed as well as light weight, and its platform featured a lightweight cromoly-steel hinged chassis, rear-mounted V8 engine, front-drive and three-wheels. The vehicle was steered via the third wheel at the rear, capable of 90° steering lock. Thus able to steer in a tight circle, the Dymaxion often caused a sensation, bringing nearby traffic to a halt.[50][51]

Shortly after launch, a prototype crashed after being hit by another car, killing the Dymaxion's driver.[52] The other car was driven by a local politician and was illegally removed from the accident scene, leaving reporters who arrived subsequently to blame the Dymaxion's unconventional design[53] — though investigations exonerated the prototype.[52] Fuller would himself later crash another prototype with his young daughter aboard.

Despite courting the interest of important figures from the auto industry, Fuller used his family inheritance to finish the second and third prototypes[54] — eventually selling all three, dissolving Dymaxion Corporation and maintaining the Dymaxion was never intended as a commercial venture.[55] One of the three original prototypes survives.

Housing

A Dymaxion house at The Henry Ford

Fuller's energy-efficient and inexpensive Dymaxion house garnered much interest, but only two prototypes were ever produced. Here the term "Dymaxion" is used in effect to signify a "radically strong and light tensegrity structure". One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Designed and developed during the mid-1940s, this prototype is a round structure (not a dome), shaped something like the flattened "bell" of certain jellyfish. It has several innovative features, including revolving dresser drawers, and a fine-mist shower that reduces water consumption. According to Fuller biographer Steve Crooks, the house was designed to be delivered in two cylindrical packages, with interior color panels available at local dealers. A circular structure at the top of the house was designed to rotate around a central mast to use natural winds for cooling and air circulation.

Conceived nearly two decades before, and developed in Wichita, Kansas, the house was designed to be lightweight and adapted to windy climates. It was to be inexpensive to produce and purchase, and assembled easily. It was to be produced using factories, workers, and technologies that had produced World War II aircraft. It was ultramodern-looking at the time, built of metal, and sheathed in polished aluminum. The basic model enclosed 90 m2 (970 sq ft) of floor area. Due to publicity, there were many orders during the early Post-War years, but the company that Fuller and others had formed to produce the houses failed due to management problems.

In 1967 he developed a concept for an offshore floating city named Triton City and published a report on the design the following year.[56] Models of the city aroused the interest of President Lyndon B. Johnson who, after leaving office, had them placed in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.[57]

In 1969, Fuller began the Otisco Project, named after its location in Otisco, New York. The project developed and demonstrated concrete spray technology used in conjunction with mesh covered wireforms as a viable means of producing large scale, load bearing spanning structures built on site without the use of pouring molds, other adjacent surfaces or hoisting.

The initial construction method used a circular concrete footing in which anchor posts were set. Tubes cut to length and with ends flattened were then bolted together to form a duodeca-rhombicahedron (22-sided hemisphere) geodesic structure with spans ranging to 60 feet (18 m). The form was then draped with layers of ¼-inch wire mesh attached by twist ties. Concrete was then sprayed onto the structure, building up a solid layer which, when cured, would support additional concrete to be added by a variety of traditional means. Fuller referred to these buildings as monolithic ferroconcrete geodesic domes. The tubular frame form proved too problematic when it came to setting windows and doors, and was abandoned. The second method used iron rebar set vertically in the concrete footing and then bent inward and welded in place to create the dome's wireform structure and performed satisfactorily. Domes up to three stories tall built with this method proved to be remarkably strong. Other shapes such as cones, pyramids and arches proved equally adaptable.

The project was enabled by a grant underwritten by Syracuse University and sponsored by US Steel (rebar), the Johnson Wire Corp, (mesh) and Portland Cement Company (concrete). The ability to build large complex load bearing concrete spanning structures in free space would open many possibilities in architecture, and is considered as one of Fuller's greatest contributions.

Dymaxion map and World Game

Fuller also designed an alternative projection map, called the Dymaxion map. This was designed to show Earth's continents with minimum distortion when projected or printed on a flat surface. In the 1960s, Fuller developed the World Game, a collaborative simulation game played on a 70-by-35-foot Dymaxion map,[58] in which players attempt to solve world problems.[59][60] The object of the simulation game is, in Fuller's words, to “make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”[61]

Appearance and style

Buckminster Fuller wore thick-lensed spectacles to correct his extreme myopia, a condition that went undiagnosed for the first five years of his life.[7]:7 Fuller's hearing was damaged during his Naval service in World War I and deteriorated during the 1960s.[62] After experimenting with bullhorns as hearing aids during the mid-1960s,[62] Fuller adopted electronic hearing aids from the 1970s onward[7]:397

Buckminster Fuller exclusively dressed in dark-colored suits during his public appearances, appearing like "an alert little clergyman".[63]:18 Fuller had previously experimented with unconventional clothing immediately after his 1927 epiphany. However, he found that breaking social fashion customs made others devalue or dismiss his ideas.[64]:6:15 Fuller learned the importance of physical appearance as part of one's credibility, and decided to become "the invisible man" by dressing in clothes that would not draw attention to himself.[64]:6:15 With self-deprecating humor, Fuller described this black-suited appearance as resembling a "second-rate bank clerk".[64]:6:15

Quirks

Following his global prominence from the 1960s onward, Fuller became a frequent flier, often crossing time zones to lecture in international cities. In the 1960s and 70s, he wore three watches simultaneously; one for the time zone of his office in Carbondale, one for the time zone of the location he would next visit, and one for the time zone he was currently in.[63]:290[65][66] In the 1970s, Fuller was only in 'homely' locations (his personal home in Carbondale, Illinois; his holiday retreat in Bear Island, Maine; his daughter's home in Pacific Palisades, California) roughly 65 nights per year—the other 300 nights were spent in hotel beds in the locations he visited on his lecturing and consulting circuits.[63]:290

In the 1920s, Fuller experimented with polyphasic sleep, which he called Dymaxion sleep. Inspired by the sleep habits of animals such as dogs and cats,[67]:133 Fuller worked until he was tired, and then slept short naps. This generally resulted in Fuller sleeping 30-minute naps every 6 hours.[63]:160 This allowed him "twenty-two thinking hours a day", which aided his work productivity.[63]:160 Fuller reportedly kept this Dymaxion sleep habit for two years, before quitting the routine because it conflicted with his business associates' sleep habits.[68] Despite no longer personally partaking in the habit, in 1943 Fuller suggested Dymaxion sleep as a strategy that the United States could adopt to win World War II.[68]

Despite only practising true polyphasic sleep for a period during the 1920s, Fuller was known for his stamina throughout his life. He was described as "tireless"[69]:53 by Barry Farrell in Life magazine, who noted that Fuller stayed up all night replying to mail during Farrell's 1970 trip to Bear Island.[69]:55 When he was aged in his seventies, Fuller generally slept for 5–8 hours per night.[63]:160

Fuller documented his life copiously from 1915 to 1983, approximately 270 feet (82 m) of papers in a collection called the Dymaxion Chronofile. He also kept copies of all incoming and outgoing correspondence. The enormous Fuller Collection is currently housed at Stanford University.

If somebody kept a very accurate record of a human being, going through the era from the Gay 90s, from a very different kind of world through the turn of the century—as far into the twentieth century as you might live. I decided to make myself a good case history of such a human being and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record.[70][71]

In his youth, Fuller experimented with several ways of presenting himself: R. B. Fuller, Buckminster Fuller, but as an adult finally settled on R. Buckminster Fuller, and signed his letters as such. However, he preferred to be addressed as simply "Bucky".

Language and neologisms

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and said it was important to describe the world as accurately as possible.[72] Fuller often created long run-on sentences and used unusual compound words (omniwell-informed, intertransformative, omni-interaccommodative, omniself-regenerative) as well as terms he himself invented.[73]

Fuller used the word Universe without the definite or indefinite articles (the or a) and always capitalized the word. Fuller wrote that "by Universe I mean: the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated (to self or others) Experiences."[74]

The words "down" and "up", according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words "in" and "out" should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth. "I suggest to audiences that they say, 'I'm going "outstairs" and "instairs."' At first that sounds strange to them; They all laugh about it. But if they try saying in and out for a few days in fun, they find themselves beginning to realize that they are indeed going inward and outward in respect to the center of Earth, which is our Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they begin to feel real 'reality.'"[75]

"World-around" is a term coined by Fuller to replace "worldwide". The general belief in a flat Earth died out in classical antiquity, so using "wide" is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth—a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume but has no width. Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. Other neologisms collectively invented by the Fuller family, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, are the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse", replacing "sunrise" and "sunset" to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-copernican celestial mechanics.

Fuller also invented the word "livingry," as opposed to weaponry (or "killingry"), to mean that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. "The architectural profession—civil, naval, aeronautical, and astronautical—has always been the place where the most competent thinking is conducted regarding livingry, as opposed to weaponry."[76]

As well as contributing significantly to the development of tensegrity technology, Fuller invented the term "tensegrity" from tensional integrity. "Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder."[77]

"Dymaxion" is a portmanteau of "dynamic maximum tension". It was invented about 1929 by two admen at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago to describe Fuller's concept house, which was shown as part of a house of the future store display. They created the term utilizing three words that Fuller used repeatedly to describe his design – dynamic, maximum, and tension.[78]

Fuller also helped to popularize the concept of Spaceship Earth: "The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn't come with it."[79]

Concepts and buildings

His concepts and buildings include:

Influence and legacy

Among the many people who were influenced by Buckminster Fuller are: Constance Abernathy,[84] Ruth Asawa,[85] J. Baldwin,[86][87] Michael Ben-Eli,[88] Pierre Cabrol,[89] John Cage, Joseph Clinton,[90] Peter Floyd,[88] Medard Gabel,[91] Michael Hays,[88] David Johnston,[92] Robert Kiyosaki,[93] Peter Jon Pearce,[88] Shoji Sadao,[88] Edwin Schlossberg,[88] Kenneth Snelson,[85][94][95] Robert Anton Wilson[96] and Stewart Brand.[97]

An allotrope of carbon, fullerene—and a particular molecule of that allotrope C60 (buckminsterfullerene or buckyball) has been named after him. The Buckminsterfullerene molecule, which consists of 60 carbon atoms, very closely resembles a spherical version of Fuller's geodesic dome. The 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry was given to Kroto, Curl, and Smalley for their discovery of the fullerene.[98]

He is quoted in the lyric of "The Tower Of Babble" in the musical "Godspell:" "Man is a complex of patterns and processes."[99]

The indie band Driftless Pony Club named their 2011 album, Buckminister, after him. All the songs within the album are based upon his life and works.

On July 12, 2004, the United States Post Office released a new commemorative stamp honoring R. Buckminster Fuller on the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome and by the occasion of his 109th birthday. The stamp's design replicated the January 10, 1964 cover of Time Magazine.

Fuller was the subject of two documentary films: The World of Buckminster Fuller (1971) and Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud (1996). Additionally, filmmaker Sam Green and the band Yo La Tengo collaborated on a 2012 "live documentary" about Fuller, The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller.[100]

In June 2008, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe", the most comprehensive retrospective to date of his work and ideas.[101] The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2009. It presented a combination of models, sketches, and other artifacts, representing six decades of the artist's integrated approach to housing, transportation, communication, and cartography. It also featured the extensive connections with Chicago from his years spent living, teaching, and working in the city.[102]

Robert Kiyosaki,[103]'s 2015 book "Second Chance" is largely about Kiyosaki's interactions with Fuller, and Fuller's unusual final book "Grunch of Giants".[104]

In 2012, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted "The Utopian Impulse" – a show about Buckminster Fuller's influence in the Bay Area. Featured were concepts, inventions and designs for creating "free energy" from natural forces, and for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. The show ran January through July.[105]

Patents

(from the Table of Contents of Inventions: The Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller (1983) ISBN 0-312-43477-4)

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica. (2007). "Fuller, R. Buckminster". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Archived from the original on 21 October 2007. Retrieved April 20, 2007.
  2. ↑ Serebriakoff, Victor (1986). Mensa: The Society for the Highly Intelligent. Stein and Day. pp. 299, 304. ISBN 0-8128-3091-1.
  3. ↑ Fuller, Buckminster (1983). Inventions, The Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller. St. Martin's Press. pp. vii.
  4. 1 2 3 Pawley, Martin (1991). Buckminster Fuller. New York: Taplinger. ISBN 0-8008-1116-X.
  5. ↑ Sieden, Lloyd Steven (2000). Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work. New York: Perseus Books Group. pp. 84–85. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3. However, in 1927 his own financial difficulties forced Mr. Hewlett to sell his stock in the company. Within weeks Stockade Building Systems became a subsidiary of Celotex Corporation, whose primary motivation was akin to that of other conventional companies: making a profit. Celotex management took one look at Stockade's financial records and called for a complete overhaul of the company. The first casualty of the transition was Stockade's controversial president [Buckminster Fuller, who was fired].
  6. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster, Your Private Sky, p.27
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sieden, Lloyd Steven (1989). Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work. Basic Books. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3.
  8. ↑ Sieden, Lloyd Steven (1989). Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work. Basic Books. p. 87. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3. ...during 1927, Bucky found himself unemployed with a new daughter to support as winter was approaching. With no steady income the Fuller family was living beyond its means and falling further and further into debt. Searching for solace and escape, Bucky continued drinking and carousing. He also tended to wander aimlessly through the Chicago streets pondering his situation. It was during one such walk that he ventured down to the shore of Lake Michigan on a particularly cold autumn evening and seriously contemplated swimming out until he was exhausted and ending his life.
  9. ↑ Sieden, Lloyd Steven (1989). Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work. Basic Books. pp. 87–88. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3.
  10. ↑ "Design – A Three-Wheel Dream That Died at Takeoff – Buckminster Fuller and the Dymaxion Car". New York Times. June 15, 2008. (subscription required (help)).
  11. ↑ Sterngold, James (June 15, 2008). "The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller". The New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  12. 1 2 3 Haber, John. "Before Buckyballs". Review of Noguchi Museum Best of Friends exhibit (May 19, 2006 – October 15, 2006). Noguchi, then twenty-five, had already had enough influences for a lifetime — from birth in Los Angeles, to childhood in Japan and the Midwest, to premedical classes at Columbia, to academic sculpture on the Lower East Side, to Brancusi's circle in Paris. Now his exposure to Modernism and "the American century" received a decidedly New York influence.
    "Only two years before, on the brink of suicide, Fuller had decided to remake his life and the world. Why not begin on Minetta Street? In 1929, he was shopping around his first major design, plans for an inexpensive, modular home that others air-lift right where desired. Now, in exchange for meals, he took on the interior decoration and chairs for Marie's new location. He must have stood out in person, too, ever the talkative, handsome visionary in tie and starched collar."
    See also: Glueck, Grace (May 19, 2006). "The Architect and the Sculptor: A Friendship of Ideas". The New York Times. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
  13. 1 2 Lloyd Steven Sieden. Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work (pp. 74, 119–142). New York: Perseus Books Group, 2000. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3. p. 74: "Although O'Neill soon became well known as a major American playwright, it was Romany Marie who would significantly influence Bucky, becoming his close friend and confidante during the most difficult years of his life."
  14. 1 2 Haskell, John. "Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi". Kraine Gallery Bar Lit, Fall 2007. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  15. ↑ Schulman, Robert (2006). Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village. Louisville: Butler Books. pp. 85–86, 109–110. ISBN 1-884532-74-8.
  16. ↑ "Interview with Isamu Noguchi conducted by Paul Cummings at Noguchi's studio in Long Island City, Queens". Smithsonian Archives of American Art. November 7, 1973.
  17. ↑ Gorman, Michael John (March 12, 2002). "Passenger Files: Isamu Noguchi, 1904–1988". Towards a cultural history of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car. Stanford Humanities Lab. Includes several images.
  18. ↑ "IDEAS + INVENTIONS: Buckminster Fuller and Black Mountain College, July 15 – November 26, 2005". Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center. 2005.
  19. ↑ Marks, Robert W.; Fuller, R. Buckminster (1973). The Dymaxion world of Buckminster Fuller. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-01804-5.
  20. 1 2 "Shoji Sadao". World Resource Simulation Center. 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  21. ↑ "The Center for Spirituality & Sustainability". Siue.edu. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  22. ↑ "Partial list of Fuller U.S. patents". Google.com. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
  23. ↑ "Catalogue of Members: Harvard members elected from 1966-1981" (PDF). Harvard College Phi Beta Kappa. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  24. ↑ Sieden, L. Steven (2011). "Biography of R. Buckminster Fuller - Section 4: 1947–1976". BuckyFullerNow.com. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  25. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter F" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 7, 2011.
  26. ↑ "Arthur Buckminster Fuller". Archived from the original on April 19, 2014.
  27. ↑ "Buckminster Fuller: Designer of a New World, 1895-1983". Harvard Square Library. 2016. Archived from the original on August 6, 2013. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  28. ↑ Brand, Stewart (1999). The Clock of the Long Now. New York: Basic. ISBN 0-465-04512-X.
  29. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster (1969). Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2461-X.
  30. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster; Applewhite, E. J. (1975). Synergetics. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-541870-X.
  31. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster (1981). Critical Path. New York: St. Martin's Press. xxxiv–xxxv. ISBN 0-312-17488-8.
  32. ↑ Ament, Phil. "Inventor R. Buckminster Fuller". Ideafinder.com. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  33. ↑ "Buckminster Fuller World Game Synergy Anticapatory". YouTube. January 27, 2007. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  34. ↑ "The Debates". The Economist.
  35. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster (1981). "Introduction". Critical Path (1st ed.). New York, N.Y.: St.Martin's Press. xxv. ISBN 0-312-17488-8. "It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is obsolete.
  36. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster (2008). Snyder, Jaime, ed. Utopia or oblivion: the prospects for humanity. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers. ISBN 978-3-03778-127-2.
  37. ↑ "Notable Individuals Influenced by General Semantics". The Institute of General Semantics. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  38. ↑ Drake, Harold L. "The General Semantics and Science Fiction of Robert heinlein and A. E. Van Vogt" (PDF). General Semantics Bulletin 41. Institute of General Semantics. p. 144. For his dissertation showing some relationships between formulations of Alfred Korzybski and Buckminster Fuller, plus documenting meetings and associations of the two gentlemen, he was given the 1973 Irving J. Lee Award in General Semantics offered by the International Society for General Semantics.
  39. ↑ Edmondson, Amy, "A Fuller Explanation", Birkhauser, Boston, 1987, p19 tetrahedra, p110 octet truss
  40. ↑ "Geodesic Domes and Charts of the Heavens". Telacommunications.com. 1973-06-19. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  41. ↑ "The R. Buckminster Fuller FAQ: Geodesic Domes". Cjfearnley.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  42. 1 2 3 Lloyd Steven Sieden (August 11, 2000). "Buckminster Fuller's Universe". Basic Books.
  43. ↑ "R. (Richard) Buckminster Fuller 1895-1983". Coachbuilt.com.
  44. ↑ US 2101057
  45. ↑ Frank Magill (1999). "The 20th Century A-GI: Dictionary of World Biography, Volume 7". Routledge. p. 1266.
  46. ↑ Phil Patton (June 2, 2008). "A 3-Wheel Dream That Died at Takeoff". The New York Times.
  47. ↑ Sieden, Lloyd Steven (2000). Buckminster Fuller's Universe. Basic Books. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-7382-0379-9.
  48. ↑ McHale, John (1962). R. Buckminster Fuller. Prentice-Hall. p. 17.
  49. ↑ Marks, Robert (1973). The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller. Anchor Press / Doubleday. p. 104.
  50. ↑ Art Kleiner (April 2008). "The Age of Heretics". Jossey Bass, Warren Bennis Signature Series. In 1934, Fuller had interested auto magnate Walter Chrysler in financing his Dymaxion car, a durable, three-wheeled, aerodynamic land vehicle modeled after an airplane fuselage. Fuller had built three models that drew enthusiastic crowds wherever. Like all Fuller's other projects (he was responsible for refining and developing the geodesic dome, the first practical dome structure) it was inexpensive, durable and energy efficient; Fuller worked diligently to cut back the amount of material and energy used by any product he designed. "You've produced exactly the car I've always wanted to produce," the mechanically apt Chrysler told him. Then Chrysler noted ruefully, Fuller had taken one-third the time and one fourth the money Chrysler's corporation usually spent producing prototypes — prototypes Chrysler himself usually hated in the end. For a few months, it had seemed Chrysler would go ahead and introduce Fuller's car. But the banks that financed Chrysler's wholesale distributors vetoed the move by threatening to call in their loans. The bankers were afraid (or so Fuller said years later) that an advanced new design would diminish the value of the unsold motor vehicles in dealers' showrooms. For every new car sold, five used cars had to be sold to finance the distribution and production chain, and those cars would not sell if Fuller's invention made them obsolete.
  51. ↑ Marks, Robert (1973). The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller. Anchor Press / Doubleday. p. 29.
  52. 1 2 "Passenger Files: Francis T. Turner, Colonel William Francis Forbes-Sempill and Charles Dollfuss". Stanford University Archives. Archived from the original on August 21, 2012.
  53. ↑ Davey G. Johnson (March 18, 2015). "Maximum Dynamism! Jeff Lane’s Fuller Dymaxion Replica Captures Insane Cool of the Originals". Car and Driver.
  54. ↑ R. Buckminster Fuller (1983). Inventions: The Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller. St. Martin's Press.
  55. ↑ "About Fuller, Session 9, Part 15". Bucky Fuller Institute.
  56. ↑ R. Buckminster Fuller (1968). A study of a prototype floating community. Triton Foundation.
  57. ↑ Lear, John (December 4, 1971). "Cities on the Sea?". The Saturday Review 54: 90. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  58. ↑ Perry, Tony (October 2, 1995). "This Game Anything but Child's Play: Buckminster Fuller's creation aims to fight the real enemies of mankind: starvation, disease and illiteracy". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  59. ↑ Richards, Allen (May–June 1971). "R. Buckminster Fuller: Designer of the Geodesic Dome and the World Game". Mother Earth News. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  60. ↑ Aigner, Hal (November–December 1970). "Sustaining Planet Earth: Researching World Resources". Mother Earth News. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  61. ↑ "World Game". Buckminster Fuller Institute. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  62. 1 2 Tomkins, Calvin (8 January 1966). "In the Outlaw Area". The New Yorker. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
  63. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kenner, Hugh (1973). Bucky: A Guided Tour of Buckminster Fuller. New York: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0-688-00141-6.
  64. 1 2 3 "Buckminster Fuller and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Part One of Press Conference 1/3". YouTube. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
  65. ↑ Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Annals of Innovation: Dymaxion Man: Reporting & Essays". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  66. ↑ Fuller, Buckminster (1969). Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2461-X.
  67. ↑ Sieden, Lloyd Steven (2000). Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work. New York: Perseus Books Group. ISBN 0-7382-0379-3.
  68. 1 2 "Science: Dymaxion Sleep". Time. October 11, 1943. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
  69. 1 2 Farrell, Barry (26 February 1971), "The View from the Year 2000", Life magazine, pp. 46–58, retrieved 1 February 2015
  70. ↑ "Buckminster Fuller conversations". News-service.stanford.edu. 2003-01-22. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  71. ↑ "Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources:". Sul.stanford.edu. June 22, 2005. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  72. ↑ "What is important in this connection is the way in which humans reflex spontaneously for that is the way in which they usually behave in critical moments, and it is often "common sense" to reflex in perversely ignorant ways that produce social disasters by denying knowledge and ignorantly yielding to common sense." Intuition, 1972 Doubleday, New York. p.103
  73. ↑ He wrote a single unpunctuated sentence approximately 3000 words long titled "What I Am Trying to Do." And It Came to Pass – Not to Stay Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1976.
  74. ↑ "How Little I Know" from And It Came to Pass – Not to Stay Macmillan, 1976
  75. ↑ Intuition (1972).
  76. ↑ Critical Path, page xxv.
  77. ↑ Synergetics, page 372.
  78. ↑ R. Buckminster Fuller – Autobiographical Monologue/Scenario,St. Martin’s Press, Inc.,1980, page 54.
  79. ↑ "Selected Quotes". 090810 cjfearnley.com
  80. ↑ "Penang Story Lecture: KOMTAR and the Buckminster Fuller Connection", Penang Heritage Trust.
  81. ↑ "Raising KOMTAR", Penang Monthly
  82. ↑ Salsbury, Patrick G. (2000) "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science; An Introduction" Miqel.com
  83. ↑ "Eight Strategies for Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science" Buckminster Fuller Institute Archived October 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  84. ↑ DeVarco, Bonnie Goldstein (2016). "Bucky Fuller: Life, Facts & Artifacts". thirteen.org. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  85. 1 2 Zung, Thomas T. K. (20 March 2002). Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for the New Millennium. St. Martin's Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-312-28890-7.
  86. ↑ "BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today". thirteen.org. 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  87. ↑ "Buckyworks - Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today by J. Baldwin". Buckminster Fuller Institute. 2004. Archived from the original on August 24, 2012. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  88. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Makovsky, Paul. "The Fuller Effect". Retrieved 21 November 2013.
  89. ↑ Noland, Claire (November 1, 2009). "Pierre Cabrol dies at 84; architect was lead designer of Hollywood's Cinerama Dome". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2009. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  90. ↑ Buckminster Fuller Prize challenge Retrieved December 29, 2010 Archived May 1, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  91. ↑ Thomas T. K. Zung, Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for a New Millennium Retrieved December 29, 2010
  92. ↑ About David Johnston Retrieved December 29, 2010
  93. ↑ Kiyosaki, Robert. Rich Dad's Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money, pp. 3–4. Business Plus, 2009. ISBN 978-0-446-55980-5
  94. ↑ , Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition, Retrieved December 29, 2010
  95. ↑ concerning Fuller and Snelson Retrieved December 29, 2010
  96. ↑ Hi Times May 1981, Robert Anton Wilson interviews Buckminster Fuller Retrieved December 29, 2010 Archived January 1, 1970, at the Wayback Machine.
  97. ↑ From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog on YouTube (from minute 22:40) Retrieved August 16, 2012
  98. ↑ "Chemistry 1996". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  99. ↑ "Godspell: Prologue / Tower of Babble Lyrics". allmusicals.com. 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  100. ↑ The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller Retrieved May 21, 2012
  101. ↑ Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe Archived August 13, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
  102. ↑ "Chicago's MCA to show Buckminster Fuller ~ Starting with the Universe". Art Knowledge News. 2009. Archived from the original on 7 April 2010. Retrieved August 8, 2011.
  103. ↑ Kiyosaki, Robert. Second Chance: for Your Money, Your Life and Our World, Plata Publishing, LLC, 2015, ISBN 978-1612680460
  104. ↑ Fuller, R. Buckminster. Grunch of Giants, Design Science, 2008, ISBN 978-1607027591
  105. ↑ "The Utopian Impulse," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art press release, retrieved April 4, 2013

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