A Trfbute to R. Budmdssater Fssller—

Inventor, Philosopher

!.

Number44

I first met Buckminster Fuller at myapartment about three years ago. Heand his wife then lived in the samebuilding I do. An ISP colleague, BetaStarchild, told me that Fuller needed anew office. The University of Pennsyl-vania could no longer provide space forhis staff. Since we were plaming ournew buifding at the time, Beta suggestedthat Bucky could use space on thefourth floor of our building. A meetingwas arranged to discuss this and to getbetter acquainted. We had previouslybeen introduced at a press conferenceannouncing the new building. I remem-ber my first impression of Bucky. Heseemed like an elf: small, quiet, and fre-quently smiling. A few of us later dinedat a local French restaurant. Bucky re-mained quiet unless specifically ques-tioned.

After a brief negotiation, he and hisstaff moved into our building. It is apleasure for me to tell visitors that sucha distinguished scholar has hk profes-sional residence here. I only wish thathe stayed around more often. He travelsmore than I do and, alas, recentlymoved his home to Caliiormia.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, orBucky, as he prefers to be cafled, haslong been known as the inventor of thegeodesic dome, the Dymaxion map, andthe concept of “spaceship earth. ” Since1972, he has held the position of WorldFellow in Residence at the UniversityCity Science Center. The position isnow largely honorary, but Bucky con-tinues to keep his office at 1S1, which is

November 2,1981

located in the University City ScienceCenter.

Fuller was born in Milton, Massachu-setts, on July 12, 1895, the second offour children, His mother was CarolineWolcott Fuller, and his father RichardBuckminster Fuller, Sr. The Ft.dferfamily is known for strong wills andresoluteness. Among Bucky’s ancestorswere many ministers, lawyers, andmilitary leaders. His father was a Bostonmerchant importer. He was the firstFuUer in several generations who didnot enter law or the ministry.

One of Bucky’s more notable relativeswas his great-aunt Margaret Fuller, a lit-erary critic, edhor, and feminist. Shewas a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson,and first encouraged him to publish hiswork. She is also credited with discover-ing Thoreau. 1

When I first met Fuller he told methat he was born hyperopic, or far-sighted, but h~ eyes were not correctedwith glasses until he was four years old.Until then, he says, he had never seenthe details of objects—only their out-lines and general shapes. He contendsthat this early view of life is responsiblefor his still unusual outlook on theworld. Throughout his life, he has re-tained a penchant for concentrating onthe large shapes around him rather thanthe details. But I’m sure that Buckyknows that hyperopia is not a universalprescription for such a unique weltan-schauung.

FuUer’s Me has been every bit asunusual as his outlook on it. Although

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My meeting with Buckminster Fuller, during the pre~ conference announcing the new ISI building in theUniversity City Science Center, July 19, 1978. Also shown is Randall M. Whaley, president of the ScienceCenter.

he attended Harvard twice, and has 47honorary degrees, he never graduatedfrom college. He has held a number ofdiverse jobs, from an apprentice ma-chme-fitter in a cotton mill to a cashier.During World War I, he served in theNavy as commander of a crash boatflotilk. With his fatherin-law, JamesMonroe Hewlett, Bucky founded theStockade Building System in 1922.Their company manufactured a specialkind of building block. It was later soldto the Celotex Company. 1 From 1930 to1932 he edited and published Sheltermagazine,z an architectural periodical.Since the age of 33, however, he has notworked in the conventional sense at all.He is continually inventing things, andcurrently has 22 patents (and three moreapplications) to hk credit. He is theauthor of 20 books and more than 60 ar-ticles. He has been called both a geniusand a crackpot.3 He also experiencednumerous financial failures.

Depending upon one’s outlook, Ful-ler has been considered an artist, archi-

tect, inventor, mathematician, poet,writer, builder, philosopher, and scien-tist. He has done a wide variety of thingsto earn such titles-invented, designed,and built new types of buildings (con-sidered by at least one author as art-work4), maps, cars, and chairs; createdhis own system of geometry (withmodels that biological structures werelater discovered to follow); coinednumerous terms; written poems; devel-oped water recycling systems; and in-spired untold numbers of people withlofty, long-range visions.

Bucky says that the real BuckminsterFuller came into being in 1927, aboutten years after his marriage to AnneHewlett on July 12, 1917. When theirfirst daughter, Alexandra, died in 1922,Bucky entered a major crisis period inhis life. Five years later, Bucky’s father-in-law sold the building business theyhad founded, due to financial failures.Bucky had never had much success as abusinessman, and the new owners firedhn from his position in the company.

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The crisis cuhniiated for Bucky withthe birth of his second daughter,Allegra, the same year. 1

Convinced that he was a failure,Bucky briefly considered suicide. Hedecided, however, that his life’s exper-ience was not his to destroy and that hewas only a failure as long as he kept try-ing to earn a living according tosociety’s rules. It was time to be honestwith himseff and work according to hisOWII rules. And the rules he set for him-self were simple: he would dedicatehimself to improving the human condi-tion in any way he could. He was then32 years old. Today, 54 years later,F,tdler continues to pursue this goal. 1

One of the first things Bucky did aftermaking his crucial decision was to stoptalking for almost two years. Hewanted, he says, to break hhnself of thehabit of talkiig by rote. He intended,instead, to be sure that he meant exactlyevery word he said. In a recent inter-view, writer John Love described howFuller was affected by these two years:“He emerged from this period of monk-ish silence a changed man. He set aboutto discover nothing less than the operat-ing principles of the universe, and thento apply them to designs for new kindsof shelter and other Me-enhancing in-ventions. ‘I decided to invest my lie thisway,’ Bucky says. ”i

This process of discovering the grandscheme of things has led Bucky alongnumerous paths. He decided at age fourthat the triangle was the basis of muchin the universe, and many of his designshave evolved from that principle. Oneof the first was his “4D” or “Dymaxion”house-a complete family dwellinghung around a central pole. Mass-pr*ducible, it could be dropped in place bya dirigible, and moved at whim. Thehouse was completely automated: re-frigerators and cupboards opened at theinterruption of a light beam; clotheswere washed, pressed, and stored aut~matically; and the house was kept dust-free by its air circulation system. Waterwas recycled. And this, I should pointout, was designed in 1927! Had the ma-

terials needed to build it been feasiblethen, the house could have retailed forabout $1, 50&not bad even for thosedays. The term Dymaxion, wh~ch Buckyhas adopted as his personal trademark,was originally coined expressly for thishouse when it was displayed at the Mar-shall Field department store in Chicago.The term, a combination of “dyna-mism,” “maximum,” and “ions,” is nowdefined by Bucky as “the most-advan-tage-from-the-least technology.”b

Unfortunately, the Dymaxion house,like many of Bucky’s inventions, wasahead of its time. The idea of a househung from a pole was quite unlike any-thing else designed at the time, and thematerials needed to build it were un-dreamed of in 1927. In The DymaxionWorld of Buckminster Fuller, a work hewrote with Robert Marks, he explainsthat the American Institute of Archi-tects so disliked his house that theypassed a resolution concerning it: “Be itresolved that the American Institute ofArchhects establish itself on record asinherently opposed to any peas-in-a-podreproducible designs. ” 1 The Dymaxionhouse, due to its advanced ideas, wasthe fwst of many inventions that earnedBucky the name “crackpot.”

The Dymaxion house, shown in Fig-ure 1, was never built except as a tablemodel. But Bucky continued to invent.In 1930 he produced the Dymaxionbathroom-an offshoot of his Dymax-ion house. The Dymaxion bathroomwas composed of four pieces of sheetmetal stamped out in a factory. Whenfitted together (a process which onlytook a few minutes), they made a com-plete single surface form that containeda shower/tub, a toilet, and a sink. Thetoilet used a special chemical systemrather than water, and the atomizershower ran for ten minutes on a quart ofwater, Bucky’s idea was to create abathroom that could be easily movedand installed-just like a refrigerator ora stove. Although about a dozen of thebathrooms were built and installed,. themanufacturer, Phelps-Dodge Corpora-tion, soon stopped production. One of

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Phelps-Dodge’s largest customers, theStandard Sanitary Company, apparentlywas afraid that plumbers’ unions wouldreact unfavorably to the Dymaxionbathroom. Such a reaction would havehad a serious effect on both companies’business. ~

In addition to hk house and bath-room, Bucky designed a Dymaxion carthat could seat ten people. Built in theshape of a teardrop, the car could reacha speed of 120 miles an hour, and washighly maneuverable. It could, for ex-ample, rotate in a circle around its frontwheels. The car is shown in Figures 2and 3. Three Dymaxion cars were actu-ally built and received favorable atten-tion from the public. Unfortunately,when the second of the cars was in-volved in a fatal accident (the Dymaxioncar was rammed by another car) thepublicity which it attracted provedequally fatal. The offending car, whichwas owned by a minor government of-ficial, was removed from the accident

scene before the press arrived. The ac-cident was consequently blamed onBucky’s car. I

Another well-known Fuller inventionat this time was the Dymaxion map, aflat projection that shows the entireworld on one surface with negligibledistortions. The map has enjoyedpopularity, although, according toBucky’s staff, it has not been an enor-mous financial success. Various ver-sions of the map can be orderedfrom Dymaxion Artifacts, 3501 Mar-ket Street, University City ScienceCenter, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania19104. Prices range from $1.00 to’$15.(M.

Working with the Butler Manufactur-ing Company, Bucky also designed the“Dymaxion deployment unit” in theearly- 1940s, which was actually a con-verted grain bin. Easily moved and as-sembled, these units made excellenttemporary housing for the military dur-ing World War II. A gradual shortage of

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Ftgure 2: Futler and his Dymaxion car, shown together with one of his most recent artifacts, the fly’s eyedome,

--—. ..._.=- .....–—---

Ffgum 3: Scale drawing of the Dymaxion car, showing its interior design. The car was steered by its rearwheel.

metal during the war, however, brought with the introduction of the geodesicabout the end of the deployment unit. 1 dome.Bucky also designed “multi-deck” apart- Like most of Bucky’s projects, thement houses, which, like his Dymaxion geodesic dome was a sort of accidentalhouse, were hung from a central pole! invention-an offshoot of his attempt toUnfortunately, as with his Dymaxion understand the nature of the universe.house, these ideas were premature, Hugh Kenner, a professor of English atsince not enough people could appreci- Johns Hopkins University and a goodate them. Thk only added to his share friend of Fuller, notes that Bucky saysof bad luck. But all thk began to change he “didn’t set out to invent the geodesic

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dome.” In fact, Bucky points out, “Imight have come up with a pair of flyingslippers. ”b

Although I’m no student of mathe-matics, I am going to attempt an expla-nation of how the geodesic domeevolved. Whale enormously simpliiled, Ihope my version will at least give an in-dication of the incredible thought pro-cesses that brought about Fuller’s dome.The geodesic dome actually began withBucky’s attempt to organize the energypatterns of the universe into a logicalsystem. He was hoping to create ageometry of energy. His attempts atcreating this geometry brought him to,among other things, the phenomenonthat he called “closest-packing ofspheres.” Bucky discovered that onesphere completely surrounded by otherspheres of identical size always formed a14-sided polyhedron. A polyhedron isdefined as a “solid form created byplane faces.”~ A cube, for example, is apolyhedron. Fuller cafled this 14-sidedpolyhedron the “vector equilibrium”because “all the sides of this figure areof equal length, and this length is thesame as the distance from any of itsvertexes to the center of the figure, ”l Inother words, the figure represents anequihbriurn of forces.

Fuller further discovered that if heremoved the central sphere and com-pressed the polyhedron, the resultingfigure was an icosahedron, or a 20-sidedsolid figure. Continuing to contractsymmetrically, Fuller produced fromthe icosahedron an octahedron (eightsides) and finally a tetrahedron (foursides, or a pyramid). These three forms,Bucky found, are the only all-triangular,symmetric systems. These systems rep-resent an integrated system of forces,and are quite stable. They will not col-lapse or expand of their own accord. Hebelieves, as a result, that they providethe most economical, stable structuralsystem. 1

The geodesic dome itself is a result ofthe projection of these triangular sys-tems outward onto a spherical surface.

“l’he result is a spherical representationof these forms, or basicaLly, a sphericalsystem of triangles. According toBucky, thk generates “a structuredsystem of maximum economy. ” 1

In th~ final form, the dome system ofspherical triangles is formed by a seriesof intercrossing circles on the sphere.FuUer thus chose the name “geodesic”for his domes, as in modern geometrythe arc of a great circle is called ageodesic. (A great circle is a “circleformed on the surface of a sphere by theintersection of a plane that passesthrough the center of the sphere.”? Asan example, the equator is a great circleon the earth. An arc is a portion of thecurved line that constitutes the circle.T)

Fufler’s geodesic domes have a num-ber of remarkable quafities. They canbe built of many materials, such aspaper, wood, or plastic. They can covera much larger area of space than con-ventional buildings, without needing in-ternal support. They are also muchlighter and less expensive to build thanconventional buildings of comparablesize. 1 Figure 4 shows one of his geodesicdomes.

With the introduction of the geodesicdome in 1948, Bucky’s fortunes finallybegan to change. People all over theworld were thrilled with the dome, andwherever it was exhibited, it was an im-mediate hit. A demand for domes grewsteadily. When Bucky received the pat-ent (US patent #2,682,2.35) for the domeon June 29, 1954, which gave him solecontrol of the geodesic dome, his for-tune was finally made. He was then justthree weeks short of h~ sixtieth btih-day. The patent has since expired, andalthough Bucky is usually credited asthe dome’s inventor, he no longermakes any money from it.

To date, hundreds of thousands ofgeodesic domes have been built aroundthe world. One of the largest was built inBaton Rouge, Louisiana, in October1958. Constructed by the Union TankCar Company, it was built to housetrains being repaired, The dome rises

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F@me 4: Fuller’s gecdesic dome.

128 feet at its center, and covers a floorarea of 115,558 square feet, yet its totalweight is only 1,200 tons.

Geodesic domes are relatively simpleto build. Workmen in Afghanistanerected one in two days for the Intern-ational Trade Fair in 1956 simply by fit-ting together parts that had been color-coded in blue and red. It’s almost, in asense, a giant erector set! In fact, youcould easily build one with an erectorset. Nobody, however, has ever specif-ically designed a geodesic domebuilding kit as a toy. Another dome,built in Hawaii in the late- 1950s, wascompleted in one day. It housed a sym-phony orchestra and an audience of1,822 that night. From 1959 to 1972,whale he was research professor ofdesign science at Southern Illinois Uni-versity, Bucky and Anne lived in ageodesic dome.

Undoubtedly, the geodesic dome isthe principal reason for Fuller’s intern-ational fame. As the dome increased inpopularity, so did Bucky. Perhaps themost remarkable of his many resultingawards are his many medals from theAmerican Institute of Architects. Theyseem to have completely reversed theirearlier feelings about Bucky, and in1960 they made him an honorary mem-ber. In 1970, Bucky received his fourthaward from this organization, a goldmedal, for, among other things, “the

design of the strongest, lightest andmost efficient means of enclosing spaceyet devised by man.” Bucky has alsowon the Franklin Institute’s Frank P.Brown medal, awarded “in recognitionof discoveries involving meritorious im-provement in building and allied indus-tries,” and the American Institute ofSteel Construction Award for Excel-lence. He has been made an honorarycitizen of many communities, and amember and honorary member of nu-merous organizations. These range fromMensa International to the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement ofScience. He has been honored byseveral “Buckminster Fuller days” andmany other awards far too numerous tomention here. His biography lists 93 dif-ferent awards. Figure 5 gives a samplingof them.

Another product of Bucky’s geometryis the concept of tensegrity. The termcomes from a combination of the words“tensional integrity.”j In a tensegritysystem, parts are held together througha “discontinuous-c oppression, continu-ous-tension” relationship. It is as if, ac-cording to Bucky, “there would be aspherical building of bricks, in whichthe ~ricks would be interlaced with rub-ber bands; each brick would be in effectrestrained from escaping from the pat-tern only by the rubber bands for nobrick would be in direct contact with

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Ffgura 5: A select listing of awards preacnted toR. Buckminster Fuller.

1952

195419M

1%7

1%8

1%9

1%9

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1975

1977

1977

1977

1978

Award of Merit, American Institute ofArchitectsGran Premio, Trienmde de Mdan, ItalyGold Medal, American Institute ofArchitectsCentennial Award, Boston S.xiety ofArchitectsFirst Architectural Design Award,American Institute of ArctiltectsCitation of Merit, US Department ofHousing and Urban DevelopmentHumanist of the Year, AmericanAssociation of HumanistsHero for the Nuclear Age Citation,Center for Teaching about Peace andWar, Wayne State UniversityOutstanding Lecturer and Author,Anchorage, ASaskaCitation of Honorary Citizenship, City ofPhiladelpKlaAppreciation Medal, Harvard BusinessSchool Club of New YorkPlsnetmy Citizens Award,United NationsReward for Peace, World UnificationMovementEleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award,New York League for the Hard ofHearingEngineering and Science Award, DrexelUniversity Federation of Engineeringand Scientflc SocietiesR, Buckminster Fulfer Day, Boston,Massachusetts (Febmary 11, 1977)R. Buckminster Fuller Davs. State ofMmneaota (April 2E30, lh8)

any other brick. ” A tensegrity system isshown in Figure 6. Bucky has built alfsorts of tensegrity gystesns-includingtowers that appear to stand without sup-port. Like geodesic domes, tensegritydomes have no size Iiiitations, and infact, the larger they are, the strongerthey are. Among Bucky’s dreams areplans to cover a two-mile diameter sec-tion of Manhattan with a tensegntydome.1

Although Fuller has received a gooddeal of attention for his inventions, aquick perusal of Figure 5 will make itobvious that his recognition has notbeen solely the result of the dome. Thedome may have gotten people to finallytake Bucky seriously, but it is actuallyonly a small portion of his work. As I ex-plained before, Bucky’s life goal hasbeen to understand the patterns of the

universe, That understanding, he hashoped, will allow mankind to live in themost efficient, yet luxurious, way possi-ble. The inventions have been both by-products and a part of this overalf goal.And while developing his inventions,Bucky has also been trying to teU usabout the other, larger things he haslearned over the years. His early book,Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth,first introduced the concept of theEarth as a spaceship. In it, he assertsthat the Earth is simply a mechanical ve-hicle, and like any such vehicle, it needsmaintenance to continue operatingwelf. But, he goes on, “there is oneoutstandingly important fact regardingSpaceship Earth, and that is that no in-struction book came with it .“6 It is up tous, he maintains, to learn how tooperate our spaceship. We were givenour intellect for precisely that reason.We must forget, he said, the idea thatwe are a world composed of many na-tions, and think of ourselves instead asone people traveling together. And ourimmediate goal is to unite in our effortto learn how to best use our environ-ment—or spaceship-without destroy-ing it.

The book’s message was one of op-timism, however. Bucky argued (anddoes still) that technology is the answer.Managed properly, he said, the Earthcould easily support us all in a high stan-dard of life. The trick to the wholethkg, he said, is to learn to “do morewith less.”8

His latest book, Critical Path, takes upthe theme again. We have not yet fol-lowed the ideas expressed in OpemtingManual for Spaceship Earth, he says,and the problem is now getting serious.[n fact, Fufler states that unless we followthe course of action outlined in thebook-or the criticaf path-we have nomore than about five years left to us onthis planet.g Is he a prophet of doom? Ithink he is overdramatizing to make apoint. Indeed, Bucky still claims that wehave everything here we need to live welfmd happily indefinitely if we take actionnow. We must, for example, begin to

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Figure 6: A tensegrit y sphere,

draw on our energy “income”-sunfight,water power, wind power, and geother-mal energy-and stop drawing from ourenergy “savings account’’—fossil fuels.

Yet even with the dire warnines.Bucky’s outlook remains optimistic. fieis certain that man can save hlmseff. Hesummed up this feeling when he spokerecently on a Philadelphia talk show.“God,” Bucky said with a large smile,“is trying very hard to make us a suc-cess, ”g

In spite of all he has done, however,Bucky has not received as much atten-tion as might be expected. I suspect thathe is a “man ahead of his time” and hiscitation record seems to confirm thatidea. A check of our citation indexesshows that he has received “only” 200 orso citations. The majority are to hisbook Opemting Manual for SpaceshipEarth.

In an attempt to gain a better under-standing of Bucky’s citation record, we

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decided to do a brief citation analysis.Using the 1%1 -1980 Science CitationIndex@ (SCP ), the 1966-1980 SocialSciences Citation Indexm (SSCF ), andthe 1976-1980 Arts & Humanities Cita-tion Index ‘“ (A&HCI ‘“), we ran acheck on what journals cited Bucky,and why. Over 200 articles cited Fullerin the years noted. Approximately 29disciplines were represented: 11 in thesciences, 12 its the social sciences, andsix in the arts and humanities. Journalsranged in subject matter from account-ing and art to medicine and meteorol-ogy. In addition, education, religion,psychology, computer science, busi-ness, aeronautics, political science,physics, law, biology, economics, hous-ing, and philosophy journals were allrepresented. The works most-cited—alfbooks-are listed in Figure 7. Most ofthese works deal, in one form or an-other, with the same premises outliiedin Operating Manual for SpaceshipEarth. It is natural to wonder why jour-nafs from so many different disciplinesturned up.

The answer, we discovered, was rela-tively simple. Fuller’s works fall general-ly into the category of “futurism.” Andwriters dealing with the future-whether in mathematics or educa-tion—often found him a support fortheir ideas. In addition, his concepts of“doing more with less” and looking atthe overafl structure of things are widelyapplicable. Some people, of course,were ctitical or even uncomplimentary.One writer, for example, said, “Ftrller’sSpaceship Earth seems oversimplified inthe way it subsumes the biological and

political realms under the laws ofmechanics.”lo

Most, however, have either agreedwith or praised Fuller’s ideas. Typical ofthese citations:

“A superb contribution toward un-derstanding how experience, properlyevaluated, can help in avoiding wastehas been given by R. BuckminsterFuller.”! I

“If you read the book .$yrrergetics,you will realize that all systems inter-face with other systems, have subsystems and form a part of largersystems,”lz

“The recently recognised need toshift away from a concentration onland and water boundaries that mustbe jealously maintained and defendedat all costs toward a concern for theearth’s atmosphere that must be pro-tected [Utopia or OMiviorr] has cre-ated a situation in which it is very de-sirable-and indeed, very urgent—toinvent new, more appropriateforrus.”13

“At the present time, developmentof capacity on earth for all to live inmore direct relationship with energythan with matter emerges as the newuniversal imperative. [OpemtingManual for Spaceship Earth, Irrtu-ition, And It Came to Pass-Not toStayl”14

“The philosophy that children haveunusual creative vitality has beenmentioned by many people rangingfrom Herbert Read to Buckminster

Ftrller.”15

“... Nothing seemed more per-suasive than the ‘dyrnaxion’ socialphilosophy that R. Buckmirtster

F@ra 7: R. Buckmissster Fultev a selected bibfiogrsphy of his most-cited works.

Fafler R B. And it came to pass-not to sray. New York: Macmittan, 1976.157 p.--------------- Earth, Inc. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973.180 p.--------------- I seem to be a verb. New York: Bantam, 1970.192 p.. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . Intuition. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1972.190 p.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nine choins to the moon. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1%3. 375 p.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Opemting manual for spaceship earth. New York: Dutton, 1%3. 143 p.. .. .. . .. . .. ..-. Synergetic.: e.rplomtions in the geometry of thinking. New York: Macmiltan, 1975. 876p.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Synergetic., volume 11. New York: Macmitlan. 1979.592 p.--------------- Untitled epic poem on the hirtory of industtilization.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1%2. 227 p... .. .. . .. .. . . . . Utopia or oblivion. New York: Bantam, 1%9. 365 p.

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Fuller had been articulating since thetwenties.. ,but not until the post-Marxist sixties, indicatively, didFuUer become widely haifed as thesocial visionary he had alwaysbeen.”lb

“The emerging future ‘super-indus-trial society’ desperately caffs for amentality that operates holistically,anticipates rapid change and novelty,acknowledges the reciprocal interac-tion of the components of generaldynamic systems, recognizes thatwhole systems eshibi! behavior un-predictable on the basis of their com-ponents taken separately (Fuller’ssynergy) . . . .“17

“While high-energy and environ-mentally dangerous fechrrofogies willcontinue, a major revolution is occur-ring in the field of microprocessorswith immense potential for the savingof material [doing more with less inBuckminster Fuller’s sense) . . . .“18

“ ‘Structure’ is an abstract notion,which we assign at will and whichallows us to map familiar pieces andrelations into a broader context andto search for other pieces and rela-tions this context implies. This is R.Buckminster Fufler’s strategy of theposited whole in order to ferret outand map its dimensions which as suchmay not be readily observable.. ..”19

“Fuller, whose professed field isthat of ‘comprehensive anticipatorydesign science,’ has revolutionizedthe approach to archhecture anddesign through the application ofecological and biological principles.His concepts of ‘ephemeralization’and ‘doing more with less’ havebecome accepted ideals within theever-widening body of environmentalLiterature.”zo

Despite his age—he recently turned86-Fuller is still going strong. His staffkeeps quite busy handling a ftdfschedule of trips, speeches, artifactdevelopment, and publication. Fewpeople cafl him a crackpot anymore,although some admit that they find himdifficult to understand. Bucky can oftenbe somewhat long-winded, and histhinking does often seem to be on a

wavelength somehow different fromeveryone else’s. But it is certainly possi-ble to understand Bucky. He has donemuch toward ensuring us a comfortablefuture on this planet by encouragingand insisting that we plan for the future,and by his insistence that we unite as aplanet of people. His dome has donemuch toward that end—enchantingpeople all over the world with its simpleand beautiful design. In h~ own way,Bucky has spent his lifetime as an am-bassador of peace.

Bucky was nominated for the Nobelpeace prize in 1969. Since alf documentsdealing with the prize are confidential, Idon’t know why he didn’t win the prizethat year, but it seems tome that he wasan excellent candidate. Nominations forthe Nobel peace prize, which must be inbefore February 1 of the prize year, maybe submitted by seven groups. Accord-ing to the Nobel committee, they are:“1, active and former members of theNobel Committee of the NorwegianStorting and the advisers appointed bythe Norwegian Nobel Institute; 2. mem-bers of the national assemblies andgovernments of the different states andmembers of the Inter-parliamentaryUnion; 3. members of the InternationalCourt of Arbitration at The Hague; 4.members of the Commission of the Per-manent International Peace Bureau; 5.members and associate members of theInstitute de Droit International; 6. uni-versity professors of political scienceand jurisprudence, history and philoso-phy; 7. persons who have been awardedthe Nobel Peace Prize.”zl

The Nobel committee then has histo-ries prepared for all candidates, whichare considered and evaluated later inthe year. If the committee feels one ofthose nominees is qual~led, they awardthe prize. Although I am not a memberof any of those bodies, I hope thatanyone who is wifl accept this reminderthat Bucky is an eminently worthy can-didate.

Bucky’s gold medal award from theAmerican Institute of Architects best

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sums up, I believe, the essence of thisremarkable man. The citation reads:

The American Institute of Architectspresents the 1970 Gold Medal, thehighest honor it can bestow, toRichard Buckminster Fuller, engi-neer, inventor, mathematician,educator, cartographer, philosopher,poet, author, cosmogonist, industrialdesigner and architect, whose ideas,once considered visionasy, have nowreceived national and internationalacceptance. A man responsible forthe design of the strongest, Jightestand most efficient means of enclosing

space yet devised by man. A man whohas used himself as a laboratory ofhuman response, who has at alJ timesconcerned himself with the social im-plications of his discoveries, who hasundersttmd that real wealth is energy,and a man whose objective was hu-manit y’s success in the universe.

● ☛☛☛☛

My thanks to Susan Fell Evans andEdward M. Sweeney for their help inthe prepamtion of this essay. 0,s, ISI

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2.

3.4.

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6,7,8.9,

REFERENCES

Fuller R B & Minks R W. The Dymarion worfd of Buckminster Fuller.New York: Doubleday, t960. 246 p,

Snyder R, ed, Buckminsfer Fuller: an auto biogmphical monologue/scenario.New York: St. Martin’s, 1980.218 p.

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