Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (July 12, 1895 - July 1, 1983) was an American visionary, designer, architect, inventor, and writer.
Achievements
Fuller was most famous for his geodesic domes, which can be seen as
part of military radar stations, civic buildings, and exhibition attractions. Their
construction is based on extending basic principles to build simple tensegrity
structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres). Built in this way
they are extremely lightweight and stable. The patent for geodesic domes was awarded in 1954, part of Fuller's decades-long efforts to explore nature's constructing principles to find design solutions. He
designed and built a safer, aerodynamic Dymaxion car, an alternative-projection Dymaxion Map,
energy-efficient and low-cost Dymaxion houses (the term "Dymaxion" is contracted from DYnamic MAXimum tensION), radically strong and light tensegrity structures, and much more.
Deploring waste, Fuller explored and advocated a principle that he termed "ephemeralization" - which (according to Stewart
Brand) Fuller defined as "doing more with less." He also introduced synergetics, which explores holistic engineering structures in nature (long before the term synergy became popular).
One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It has several innovative features, including revolving dresser
drawers, a fine-mist shower that reduces water consumption and variable siting for enhanced atmospheric circulation. 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' stores. The house was designed to rotate around a central mast to take advantage of natural winds for
cooling and circulation.
His most lasting insights may be geometric. He claimed 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. Some deep confirming results were that the strongest possible homogenous
truss is cyclically tetrahedral, and all solids constructed of regular polygons, except
the icosahedron, have a volume that is an integral number of
unit-tetrahedrons.
Buckminster Fuller was one of the first to propagate a systemic
worldview (see 'Operating manual for Spaceship Earth', 'Synergetics') and explored principles of energy and material
efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.
While an envisioned widespread and common adoption of geodesic domes has been disappointed (most of the smaller geodesic
structures proved hard to seal against the weather, and many people have been put off by their unconventional appearance),
Fuller's ideas, teachings, and attitude to life and creativity have in combination contributed a gadfly to rouse designers and
engineers. What Fuller accomplished, in this sense, was to make professionals and students think - question convention.
A new allotrope of carbon (fullerene) and a particular molecule of that allotrope (buckminsterfullerene or buckyballs) have been named after him.
On July 12, 2004 the United States Post Office released a new commemorative
stamp honoring Buckminster Fuller on the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome and on the occasion of his 109th
birthday.
Biography
Fuller was born on July 12, 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster and Caroline Wolcott (Andrews) Fuller. Fuller's
father died when he was 12. Spending his youth on a farm on an island off the coast of Maine, he was a boy with a natural
propensity for design and for making things. He often made things from materials he brought home from the woods, and he even
sometimes made his own tools. Notably,he experimented with designing a new apparatus for the human-powered propulsion of small
boats. Years later he decided that this sort of experience had provided him not only an interest in design, but a habit of being
fully familiar and knowledgeable about the materials that his ambitious later projects would require for actualization. Indeed,
Fuller earned a machinist’s certification, and he also knew how to fabricate using the press brake, stretch press, and
other tools and equipment relied upon in the sheet-metal trade.
Fuller was sent to Milton Academy, in Massachusetts. Afterwards, he
began studying at Harvard but was expelled from the university
twice: firstly, for entertaining an entire dance troupe; and secondly, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his
own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment.
Between his sessions at Harvard, he worked for a time in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill, and later as a laborer
working 12 hours a day in the meat-packing industry. He married in 1917, and he also served in the US Navy in World War I. In the Navy he was employed as an
aboard-ship radio operator and as an editor of a publication. After discharge, he again worked for a period in the meat-packing
business, where he acquired management experience. In the early 1920s he and his father-in-law developed the Stockade Building
System for producing light-weight, weatherproof, and fireproof housing - though ultimately the company failed.
In 1927 at the age of 32, bankrupt and
jobless, living in inferior housing in Chicago, he saw his beloved young daughter
Alexandra die of pneumonia in winter. He felt responsible, and this drove him to drink and the verge of suicide. At the last moment he decided instead to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual
can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity." For the next half-century Buckminster Fuller contributed a
wide range of ideas, designs and inventions to the world, particularly in the areas of practical, inexpensive shelter and
transportation. Documenting his life, philosophy and ideas scrupulously in a daily diary
and in 28 publications, Fuller was ultimately to be awarded 25 US patents and many honorary doctorates.
His international career took off after the success of his huge geodesic
domes in the 1950s. Fuller taught at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale from 1959-1970 in the School of Art and
Design. Now working as a designer, scientist, developer, and writer, for many years he also lectured all over the world on
design. In 1965 Fuller inaugurated the World Design
Science Decade (1965-1975) at the meeting of the International Union of Architects in
Paris. This was (in his own words) devoted to applying the principles of science to
solving the problems of humanity.
Fuller believed human societies would soon be relying 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."
On January 16, 1970 Fuller received
the Gold Medal award from the American
Institute of Architects and also received numerous other awards. He died at the age of 88, a guru of the design, architecture, and 'alternative' communities. It is said that while visiting his comatose wife in
hospital, he said "She's waiting for me," closed his eyes, and died of a heart attack within 2 hours. His wife died 36 hours
later.
Fuller was friends with Boston artist Pietro Pezzati. He also
experimented with polyphasic sleep. Fuller is mentioned on the
autodidacticism (self-teaching) page. Fuller was followed
(historically) by other designers and architects willing to explore the possibilities of new geometries in the design of
buildings (e.g., Steve Baer), not based on the conventional rectangles.
Neologisms
World-around is a term coined by Fuller to replace worldwide. The general belief in a flat Earth died out in the Middle
Ages, so using wide is an anachronism when refering 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. The terms sunsight and sunclipse are other
neologisms, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder collectively coined by the Fuller family, replacing sunrise and
sunset in order to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican
celestial mechanics.
Fuller also coined the phrase Spaceship Earth, and coined the term
(but did not invent) tensegrity.
Concepts and buildings
Patent list: http://www.bfi.org/patentlist.htm
His concepts and buildings include:
Literature
His publications include:
- 4-D Timelock (1928)
- Nine Chains to the Moon (1938)
- Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization (1962)
- Education Automation: Freeing the Scholar to Return to his Studies (1962, ISBN 0-8093-0137-7)
- Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969, ISBN 0525474331) - online at http://www.bfi.org/operating_manual.htm
- Your Private Sky (ISBN
3907044886)
- Ideas and Integrities (1969, ASIN 0020926308)
- Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity (1969, ASIN 0713901349)
- Approaching the Benign Environment (1970)
- I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)
- No More Secondhand God and Other Writings
- Intuition (1973, ASIN 0385012446)
- Buckminster Fuller to Children of Earth (1972)
- Earth, Inc. (1973)
- Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975, ISBN 0-02-541870-X) - online at http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
- Tetrascroll: Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Cosmic Fairy Tale (1975)
- And It Came to Pass -- Not to Stay (1976, ASIN 0025418106)
- R. Buckminster Fuller on Education (1979, ASIN 0870232762)
- Critical Path (1981, ISBN
0-312-17491-8)
- Synergetics 2: Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1983)
- Grunch of Giants (1983, ISBN
0-312-35194-1)
- Inventions the Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller (1983)
- Cosmography (1992, posthumous)
Secondary literature
A discussion of his work on geometry and systems appears in A Fuller Explanation (http://www.angelfire.com/mt/marksomers/40.html) by Amy C. Edmondson. Buckminster Fuller also
appears as a character in Paul Wühr's book "Das falsche Buch". His former
student J. Baldwin wrote BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for
Today (ISBN 0471198129)
Links (Fuller's Design Students)
External links
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