Architect Buckminster Fuller next to a model of his Dymaxion house.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1932
United States
Buckminster Fuller, standing behind and to the side of a model of his invention, the Dymaxion, which applies the principles of bridges and airplanes to architecture; a sheet of plywood hangs in the background; he wears a courduroy jacket and wire rimmed round glasses. Photo by F. S. Lincoln.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1943
United States
American engineer and architect Buckminster Fuller holding a globe. Photo by Andreas Feininger.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1944
United States
Fuller Buckminster posing for a picture with his daughter Allegra Fuller Snyder. Photo by George Skadding.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1945
United States
Buckminster Fuller (left) inspecting a piece of equipment. Photo by Frank Scherschel.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1945
United States
Buckminster Fuller inspecting a piece of equipment. Photo by Frank Scherschel.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1945
United States
Buckminster Fuller stands before his three-wheeled Dymaxion car. Photo by Frank Scherschel.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1959
New York City, New York, United States
Architect Buckminster Fuller, explaining principles of dymaxion building. Photo by Yale Joel.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1959
United States
Architect Buckminster Fuller explaining principles of dymaxion building.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1960
Portrait of the architect Buckminster Fuller.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1960
United States
Architect Buckminster Fuller. Photo By Howard Sochurek.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1964
United States
Buckminster Fuller explaining principles of dymaxion building. Photo by Yale Joel.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1967
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The architect stands in front of his creation, a geodesic dome which acts as the United States pavilion at the 1967 World's Fair.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1968
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Buckminster Fuller in Toronto, Canada in 1968. Photo by Doug Griffin.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1970
United States
Architect Buckminster Fuller with family. Photo by John Loengard.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1970
United States
Architect Buckminster Fuller on a voyage. Photo by John Loengard.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1970
United States
Three-quarter portrait of architect Buckminster Fuller, sitting in a wooden chair between two other men, Fuller wearing glasses and a dark suit and a white shirt with a striped tie, facing the man to his right, with his hands folded on his lap, with a serious facial expression, 1970.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1978
100 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5H 2N2, Canada
Buckminster Fuller in vintage photo outside New City Hall, Toronto April 6, 1978.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1978
100 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5H 2N2, Canada
Photo of Buckminster Fuller in Toronto. Photo taken by Frank Lennon on April 6, 1978.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1978
Boston, Massachussetts, United States
Portrait of American architect, inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller as he sits at a table with his hand on his chin, Boston, Massachussetts, 1978.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1978
100 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5H 2N2, Canada
Buckminster Fuller in Toronto, Canada in 1978. Photo by Frank Lennon.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1982
United States
American designer, architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller in 1982. Photo by Nancy R. Schiff.
Gallery of Buckminster Fuller
1983
Long Beach, California, United States
American architect, inventor, and futurist Buckminster Fuller raises his arms as he poses in front of a massive geodesic dome, Long Beach, California, April 21, 1983.
Achievements
Membership
Phi Beta Kappa
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).
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Fuller was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fuller was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fuller was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968.
National Academy of Design
In 1968, Fuller was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1970.
Buckminster Fuller, standing behind and to the side of a model of his invention, the Dymaxion, which applies the principles of bridges and airplanes to architecture; a sheet of plywood hangs in the background; he wears a courduroy jacket and wire rimmed round glasses. Photo by F. S. Lincoln.
Three-quarter portrait of architect Buckminster Fuller, sitting in a wooden chair between two other men, Fuller wearing glasses and a dark suit and a white shirt with a striped tie, facing the man to his right, with his hands folded on his lap, with a serious facial expression, 1970.
Portrait of American architect, inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller as he sits at a table with his hand on his chin, Boston, Massachussetts, 1978.
American architect, inventor, and futurist Buckminster Fuller raises his arms as he poses in front of a massive geodesic dome, Long Beach, California, April 21, 1983.
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).
(The title of this book was chosen "to encourage and stimu...)
The title of this book was chosen "to encourage and stimulate the broadest attitude toward thought... If, in imagination, all of the people of the world were to stand upon one another's shoulders, they would make nine complete chains between the earth and the moon. If it is not so far to the moon, then it is not so far to the limits - whatever, whenever, or wherever they may be." The only limits to our thinking, then, should be the limits of the universe itself. In Nine Chains to the Moon R. Buckminster Fuller takes up his own challenge and brilliantly displays the unique daring of his ideas. In the course of his analysis he makes us question our commonly-accepted notions of Euclidian geometry, "good" architecture, classical solutions to economic problems, and even our use of words. It is this kind of courageous thinking that led Fuller to his invention of the Geodesic dome and the formulation of his comprehensive anticipatory design science.
(If R. Buckminster Fuller had been pulling the strings of ...)
If R. Buckminster Fuller had been pulling the strings of corporate America, it's possible we would be living in a world of three-wheel cars, aluminum houses, and domed cities. Fuller never enjoyed that kind of power or authority. In fact, a good deal of his 24 patents and many other improbable schemes came to nothing. But Bucky-as he was universally known-was destined to be ahead of his time.
(One of Fuller’s most popular works, Operating Manual for ...)
One of Fuller’s most popular works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, is a brilliant synthesis of his world view. In this very accessible volume, edited by Jaime Snyder, Fuller investigates the great challenges facing humanity. How will humanity survive? How does automation influence individualization? How can we utilize our resources more effectively to realize our potential to end poverty in this generation? He questions the concept of specialization, calls for a design revolution of innovation, and offers advice on how to guide “spaceship earth” toward a sustainable future.
(Utopia or Oblivion is a provocative blueprint for the fut...)
Utopia or Oblivion is a provocative blueprint for the future. This comprehensive volume is composed of essays derived from the lectures he gave all over the world during the 1960s. Fuller’s thesis is that humanity - for the first time in its history - has the opportunity to create a world where the needs of 100% of humanity are met.
(Explorer of the big comprehensive patterns operating in u...)
Explorer of the big comprehensive patterns operating in universe, Buckminster Fuller knows that the world can be made to work for all of humanity. Youth, he says, sees this and will settle for nothing less. He sees man's capabilities wonderfully reflected in the fresh minds of children and speaks to the child who lives in all people.
(This book collects some of R. Buckminster Fuller’s most i...)
This book collects some of R. Buckminster Fuller’s most important recent writings on the subject of spaceship Earth: the big, interconnected, total system that is “the only one we’ve got.” These articles stress the need for considering our planet as a whole, rather than breaking it into its parts - as most of us continue to do. This theme is crucial to the thinking of Bucky Fuller, who, in addition to his many other appellations, has been called the “godfather” of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Tetrascroll: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, A Cosmic Fairy Tale
(Includes the complete text and drawings from a series of ...)
Includes the complete text and drawings from a series of twenty-one lithographs Fuller made to give an overview of his philosophy and recounts how the triangular prints were assembled into the Tetrascroll.
(Ten lectures and essays spanning the period from 1961 to ...)
Ten lectures and essays spanning the period from 1961 to 1978 contain explicit statements by Fuller on education and reflect his concern that education assist minds to function with a minimum of blockage and wasted motion.
Buckminster Fuller: An Auto-Biographical Monologue/Scenario
(Combines Buckminster Fuller's own words with pictures fro...)
Combines Buckminster Fuller's own words with pictures from the Fuller archives, from Fuller's family album, and from Snyder's documentary film to provide a portrait of the renowned American thinker, inventor, mathematician, and individualist.
(Here Buckminster Fuller takes on the gigantic corporate m...)
Here Buckminster Fuller takes on the gigantic corporate megaliths that exert increasing control over every aspect of daily life. In the form of a modern allegory, he traces the evolution of these multinational giants from the post-World War II military-industrial complex to the current army of abstract legal entities known as the corporate world. GRUNCH stands for Gross Universal Cash Heist.
(In January 1975, Fuller sat down to deliver the twelve le...)
In January 1975, Fuller sat down to deliver the twelve lectures that make up Everything I Know, all captured on video and enhanced with the most exciting bluescreen technology of the day. Props and background graphics illustrate the many concepts he visits and revisits, which include, according to the Buckminster Fuller Institute, "all of Fuller's major inventions and discoveries," "his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization," and no narrower a range of subjects than "architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering."
(R.Buckminster Fuller: World Man documents his never-befor...)
R.Buckminster Fuller: World Man documents his never-before-published 1966 Kassler lecture at Princeton University School of Architecture. Delivered at the height of his career, he used the lecture to reflect on and synthesize his most significant concepts. In addition to a faithful facsimile of the lecture's typewritten transcript, the book includes an introductory essay on Fuller's work, a glossary of key terms and phrases, and an interview with Robert Geddes, the dean responsible for bringing Fuller to teach and lecture at the school.
Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
(Using an inspired combination of geometric logic and meta...)
Using an inspired combination of geometric logic and metaphors from familiar human experience, Bucky invites readers to join him on a trip through a four-dimensional Universe, where concepts as diverse as entropy, Einstein's relativity equations, and the meaning of existence become clear, understandable, and immediately involving.
Buckminster Fuller was an American engineer, architect, and futurist who developed the geodesic dome the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure and the only practical kind of building that has no limiting dimensions (i.e., beyond which the structural strength must be insufficient). Also a poet and a philosopher, Fuller was noted for unorthodox ideas on global issues.
Background
Richard Buckminster Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts to the family of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews. He was descended from a long line of New England Nonconformists, the most famous of whom was his great-aunt, Margaret Fuller, the critic, teacher, woman of letters and cofounder of The Dial, organ of the Transcendentalist movement. The family’s history in America dated back to Fuller’s great, great, great, great grandfather British Navy Lieutenant Thomas Fuller who traveled to the American Colonies in 1630. His grandson Reverend Timothy Fuller graduated from Harvard (as did all Fuller men until Buckminster) in 1760 and was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Assembly. His son, Timothy Fuller Jr. was born in 1778 and was a founding member of Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club.
Fuller nicknamed Bucky as a child, an appellation he would never outgrow. Fuller was an awkward child with poor eyesight and mismatched legs requiring the insertion of a lift in one shoe. His physical defects were countered with a precocious intelligence and startling perspicacity, abetted, in fact, by his poor eyesight, which taught him not to trust overly the verity of physical appearances.
Fuller spent much of his youth on Bear Island, in Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine. As Fuller remembered it, his interest in building better "instruments, tools, or other devices" to increase the "technical advantage of man over environmental circumstance" began there. One of his tasks each day as a young boy was to row a boat four miles round trip to another island for the mail. To expedite this trip, he constructed his "first teleologic design invention," a "mechanical jelly fish." Noting the structure of the jellyfish and attending to its movement through the water, Fuller copied nature and produced a boat of greater speed and ease. Observing natural phenomena remained his lifelong source of inspiration
Education
Buckminster Fuller attended Froebelian Kindergarten. He had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction 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. Fuller attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and after that began studying at Harvard College, 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."
During World War I Fuller served as an ensign in the United States Navy, where he received an excellent technical education.
Despite his pedigree, Fuller never completed his formal education. Nevertheless, he was awarded many honorary doctorates.
Following his expulsion, Buckminster Fuller worked at a mill in Canada, where he took a strong interest in machinery and learned to modify and improve the manufacturing equipment. Fuller returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1915 but was again dismissed.
From 1917 until 1919, Fuller served in the United States Navy, where he demonstrated his aptitude for engineering by inventing a winch for rescue boats that could remove downed airplanes from the water in time to save the lives of pilots.
As a result of the invention, Fuller was nominated to receive officer training at the United Naval Academy, where he further developed his ability to study problems comprehensively. In 1926, when Fuller's father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett, developed a new method of producing reinforced concrete buildings, he and Fuller patented the invention, earning Fuller the first of his 25 patents.
One of Fuller's lifelong interests was using technology to revolutionize construction and improve human housing. In 1927, after inventing an easily built, air-delivered, modular apartment building, Fuller designed the Dymaxion House, an inexpensive, mass-produced home that could be airlifted to its location. Originally called the 4D House, it was later renamed by a department store that displayed a model of the house. The word "dymaxion" was coined by store advertisers and trademarked in Fuller's name. Based on the words "dynamic," "maximum," and "ion," it became a part of the name of many of Fuller's subsequent inventions. The word became synonymous with his design philosophy of "doing more with less," a phrase he later coined to reflect his growing recognition of the accelerating global trend toward the development of more efficient technology.
These inventions included the Dymaxion Car, a streamlined, three-wheeled automobile that could make extraordinarily sharp turns; a compact, prefabricated, easily installed Dymaxion Bathroom; and Dymaxion Deployment Units (DDUs), mass-produced houses based on circular grain bins. While DDUs never became popular for civilian housing, they were used during World War II to shelter radar crews in remote locations with severe climates, and they led to additional round housing designs by Fuller.
After 1947, one invention dominated Fuller's life and career: the geodesic dome. Lightweight, cost-effective, and easy to assemble, geodesic domes enclose more space without intrusive supporting columns than any other structure; they efficiently distribute stress; and they can withstand extremely harsh conditions. Based on Fuller's "synergetic geometry," his lifelong exploration of nature's principles of design, the geodesic dome was the result of his revolutionary discoveries about balancing compression and tension forces in building.
Fuller applied for a patent for the geodesic dome in 1951 and received it in 1954. In 1953, he designed his first commercial dome for the Ford Motor Company headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. The United States military became one of his biggest clients, using lightweight domes to cover radar stations at installations around the Arctic Circle. According to the Buckminster Fuller Institute, today there are more than 300,000 geodesic domes around the world, ranging from shelters in California and Africa to radar stations in remote locations, as well as geodesic structures on countless chidren's playgrounds.
Fuller was a pioneering global thinker. In 1927, at the beginning of his career, he made a now-prophetic sketch of the total earth which depicted his concept for transporting cargo by air "over the pole" to Europe. He entitled the sketch "a one-town world." In 1946, Fuller received a patent for another breakthrough invention: the Dymaxion Map, which depicted the entire planet on a single flat map without visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the continents. The map, which can be reconfigured to put different regions at the center, was intended to help humanity better address the world's problems by prompting people to think comprehensively about the planet. In the early 1950s he coined the now familiar phrase "spaceship earth" to describe the integral nature of Earth's "living system." Beginning In the late 1960s, Fuller was especially involved in creating World Game, a large-scale simulation and series of workshops he designed that used a large-scale Dymaxion Map to help humanity better understand, benefit from, and more efficiently utilize the world's resources.
Throughout his life, Fuller found numerous outlets for his innovative ideas. During the early 1930s he published Shelter magazine, and from 1938 until 1940 he was science and technology consultant for Fortune magazine. During the 1940s he began to teach and lecture at universities, including Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the late 1950s he became a professor at Southern Illinois University (SIU), where he and his wife lived in a geodesic dome when he was in residence. In 1972, he was named World Fellow in Residence to a consortium of universities in Philadelphia, including the University of Pennsylvania. He retained his connection with both SIU and the University of Pennsylvania until his death. He was the author of nearly 30 books, and he spent much of his life traveling the world lecturing and discussing his ideas with thousands of audiences.
Buckminster Fuller was born in a Protestant family and baptized so. Nevertheless, his religious views remaining Christian were strongly unorthodox. Fuller created his own scientifically-inspired rendition of “the Lord’s Prayer,” a centerpiece of the Christian faith. He considered that the next most dangerous thing to the atomic bomb is organized religion.
Politics
Fuller speak fondly of socialism (mainly the "take care of everyone" and the "plan ahead" ideas in socialism). However, said nothing about redistribution. His Design Science revolution is based in raising the living standard of the "have-nots" and "have-lesses" without taking away from the haves. This is done through ephemeralization "more with less. He did, however, discuss distribution, and how the intelligent application of that could solve problems like global food shortages, etc.
Views
Like the transcendentalists, Fuller rejected the established religious and political notions of the past and adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on the essential unity of the natural world and the use of experiment and intuition as a means of understanding it. But, departing from the pattern of his New England predecessors, he proposed that only an understanding of technology in the deepest sense would afford humans a proper guide to individual conduct and the eventual salvation of society. Industrial and scientific technology, despite their disruption of established habits and values, was not a blight on the landscape, but in fact for Fuller they have a redeeming humanitarian role.
Fuller rejected the conventional disciplines of the universities by ignoring them. In their place he imposed his own self-discipline and his own novel way of thinking in a deliberate attempt - as poets and artists do - to change his generation's perception of the world. To this end he created the term Spaceship Earth to convince all his fellow passengers that they would have to work together as the crew of a ship. His was an earnest, even compulsive, program to convince his listeners that humans had a function in universe. Humans have a destiny to serve as "local problem solvers" converting their experience to the highest advantage of others.
Fuller's favorite method of teaching - in the tradition of all great teachers since the Greek philosophers - was lecturing to large and youthful audiences. Though his penchant for talking for hours on end was notorious, he really regarded all communication as a two-way street, and he was remarkably sensitive to individual reactions - well beyond those in the front row. He tuned his always extemporaneous discourse to the rate he could see it being absorbed and digested. In the 1960s and 70s a generation seized on his prescription that there was no need to "earn a living" - often disregarding the other side of the coin: the need for individual initiative in "doing what needs to be done." In this spirit he advanced "design science" as the solution for worldwide social and ecological problems.
America has been in the middle of a love-hate affair with technology - and Fuller is right in the middle of it. He introduced not only a unique rationale for technology, but an aesthetic of it. Likewise, his synergetic geometry bears for Fuller an imperative with an ethical content for humans to reappraise their relationship to the physical universe. Manifest together as design science, they offer the prospect of a kind of secular salvation.
Quotations:
"My philosophy requires of me that I convert not only my own experiences but whatever I can learn of other men's experiences into statements of evolutionary trending and concomitantly defined problem challenges and responses. My philosophy further requires that I at least attempt to solve the problems by inanimate invention."
"When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."
"Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."
"Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword."
"Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value."
"How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else."
"Don't fight forces, use them."
"Integrity is the essence of everything successful."
"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."
Membership
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). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. In 1968, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1970. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Phi Beta Kappa
,
United States
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
,
United States
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
National Academy of Design
,
United States
Personality
In 1927, after the construction company failed, Fuller was unemployed and contemplated suicide, but he had a remarkable realization. Deciding that he had no right to end his own life, he concluded that he had a responsibility to use his experiences and intellect in the service of others. As a consequence, he spent nearly two years as a recluse, deep in contemplation about the universe and how he could best contribute to humanity. He made a habit of napping for 30 minutes after every six hours of work, falling asleep instantly.
Interests
traveling
Philosophers & Thinkers
Albert Einstein, Henry Ford
Politicians
Mahatma Gandhi
Writers
Jules Verne
Artists
Leonardo da Vinci
Sport & Clubs
football
Music & Bands
Gian Carlo Menotti
Connections
In 1917 Fuller married Anne Hewlett, daughter of James Monroe Hewlett, a well-known architect and muralist They had a daughter Allegra Fuller Snyder.