Buckminster Fuller - New World Encyclopedia

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Articles About Feedback Buckminster Fuller From New World Encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search Previous (Buckingham Palace) Next (Buckwheat) Richard Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American visionary, designer, architect, poet, author, and inventor. Throughout his life, Fuller was concerned with the question of whether humanity has a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how. Considering himself an average individual without special monetary means or academic degree, he chose to devote his life to this question, trying to find out what an individual like him could do to improve humanity's condition that large organizations, governments, or private enterprises inherently could not do. Pursuing this lifelong experiment, Fuller wrote 28 books, coining and popularizing terms such as "spaceship earth," ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also created a large number of inventions, mostly in the fields of design and architecture, the best-known of which is the geodesic dome. Contents 1 Introduction 2 Biography 2.1 New beginning 2.2 The beginning of increased activity 3 Philosophy and world view 3.1 Self disciplines 4 The Beginning of Real Work 4.1 Redefining the world 5 Some quotes from Synergetics 6 Legacy 7 Concepts and buildings 8 Literature 9 External links 10 Credits Late in his life, after working on his concepts for several decades, Fuller had achieved considerable public visibility. He traveled the world giving lectures, and received numerous honorary doctorates. Most of his inventions, however, never made it into production, and he was strongly criticized in most of the fields that he tried to influence (such as architecture), or simply dismissed as a hopeless utopian. Fuller's proponents, on the other hand, claim that his work has not yet received the attention that it deserves Introduction One of the most powerful influences on R. Buckminster Fuller was a pair of glasses he obtained as he was entering kindergarten in 1900. They were to become his trademark. In 1927 he contemplated suicide, but at the last minute decided to re-think everything he had ever been taught to believe, dedicated himself to serving mankind, and began a complete inventory of world resources. In the 1940s he recognized the emergence of an invisible reality which could be perceived only by the mind. In the 1970s Fuller realized that it was now possible to provide a very high standard of living for all mankind, making resource-wars obsolete. Biography Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller, (July 12, 1895 - July 1, 1983), was an American-born architect who worked and taught all around the planet. He popularized the term 'synergy', wrote over 21 books, and was granted 28 U.S. patents. He wrote and lectured on the nature of the Universe, the role of human beings, history, and corporations. His life is considered to be the most documented in history. Up to the age of four Fuller didn't realize that the patterns he had grown accustomed to were the result of near-sightedness until his family realized the situation and fitted him with corrective lenses. His most vivid childhood memory was welcoming in the new century with his first pair glasses. His pursuit of the patterns he found in nature continued throughout his life. His search for nature's coordinate system, and mankind's role in the universe began while he watched bubbles and realized that nature doesn't use Pi to create spheres. Often thought of as an eccentric utopian, Fuller was a critic of the way society had been organized since the time of the Phoencians . His view of history revealed the increasing significance of mind-power over muscle-power. He claimed to be a verb, predicted a one world family, and claimed that every human being could comprehend the principles of the Universe, (through general systems analysis), and continue the creative work begun by God. The invitations, awards, and appointments which followed him through all the days of his adult life were not the result of self-promotion, but came because others recognized the value of his design science 1 work. Born to R. B. Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews in Milton, Massachusetts, Bucky grew up on the family farm off the coast of Maine on Bear Island. He had no expection that in his lifetime mankind would go from horse and buggy to walking on the Moon. Relatives who influenced his thinking during the first decade of the 1900s included his great aunt Margaret Fuller Assoli (who, with Ralph Waldo Emerson co-edited the Transcendentalist magazine, the Dial, were the first to publish Henry David Thoreau, and was author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century ); his uncle, Waldo Fuller (a Harvard football player, 1883, a chief engineer on the NYC subway system, and Klondike gold rush participant); and grandmother, Matilda Wolcott Andrews, (whose family bought Bear, Compass, and Little Sprucehead Islands off the coast of Maine). After elementary school, he attended Milton Academy upper school. Fuller, inspired by Robert Burns , began keeping a journal when he was 12 years old, (1907), in the hopes of seeing himself as others saw him, and getting a glimpse of his "comprehensively integrated self." He later renamed his journal the "Chronofile." His father, Richard, one of several generations of Harvard-educated Fullers, had a stroke that year and died three years later. During the second decade of the twentieth century Fuller continued his education, graduating from Milton Academy in 1913 and followed in the footsteps of his father's family by enrolling at Harvard (as a member of the Class of 1917). But Bucky was expelled a year later. He moved to Quebec, Canada and worked at a cotton mill until given a second chance at Harvard. A year later he was expelled again. This time he went to New York City and got a 12-hour-a-day job with the Armour meat packing company. Fuller's short military career began in 1916, (two years after the beginning of World War I ), when he entered the U.S. military training camp in Plattsburg, NY, as a corporal. A year later he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve, and married Anne Hewlett on his birthday. Their first daughter, Alexandra was born in 1918. That same year, he was assigned to a short special course at the Annapolis Naval Academy in Maryland, and a year later was temporarily assigned to the USS George Washington, then to another special course at Annapolis. Promoted to Lt. USN, he was assigned to troop transport duty as a personal aide to Admiral Albert Gleaves. He also saw service on the USS Great Northern and USS Seattle. The Navy provided much food for Fuller's thoughts about history and the Universe. But on November 1, 1919 he resigned when Adm. Gleaves was re-assigned, and his daughter, Alexandra, got sick. The beginning of the 1920s saw Fuller again working for Armour and Company, this time as an assistant export manager in their New York City headquarters. But in 1921 he resigned to become a national account sales manager with the Kelly-Springfield truck company, also in NYC. The following year he resigned from Kelly-Springfield to start a career as an "independent enterpriser" and joined with his father-in-law in developing the Stockade Building System, and built light-weight, weatherproof, and fireproof houses. That year saw Alexandra die of complications from polio and spinal meningitis. Four years later, in 1926, after not making any money building houses, Fuller resigned as president of Stockade. Believing that his was a "throwaway life" at 32, (1927), Fuller contemplated suicide . Standing on a river pier, he nearly threw himself into the water. But, instead, decided to do his own thinking for the first time in his life, and embarked on an "experiment" to see what one person in his situation could do to benefit mankind. New beginning Fuller got serious about housing, and published his first book, 4-D Timelock, established a research and development company, and began developing his "energetic/synergetic geometry." During this time he invented a "dymaxion dwelling machine" (image pending) as part of his concept of air-deliverable, mass-produceable houses based on anticipatory design science. In 1929 Fuller was a regular at Romany Marie's Tavern in Greenwich Village, NY, eating dinner with associates and discussing the development of his ideas. The 1930s saw Fuller buy a magazine in Philadelphia, at about the same time, he was featured in a Fortune magazine article on the housing industry. His mother, Caroline, passed away during this time; and he got involved with experimental television broadcasts at CBS studios; and then became the science and technology consultant for Fortune magazine. As he pursued his research and development activities in the 1940s, Fuller entered his element when he realized that an "invisible world" based on technological know-how, was beginning to emerge and reshape the world. At this time Fuller began an informal, but long-term, relationship with the U.S. government. In 1940 Fuller left Fortune magazine and started the deployment unit of the Butler Manufacturing Company in Kansas City. (Butler manufactured metal buildings used as radar shacks and dorms for U.S. flyers and mechanics.) Two years later Fuller joined the U.S. Board of Economic Warfare as its head mechanical engineer in Washington, DC. And in 1944 he became a special assistant to the Deputy Director of the U.S. Foreign Economic Administration. Until 1946 Fuller lived in Wichita, Kansas, where he, as chief design engineer, produced a prototype of the Dymaxion house under the auspices of a coalition of labor, private, and government organizations. Also in 1946 Fuller was awarded the first cartographic projection patent ever granted by the U.S. Patent Office for his Dymaxion map of the world. The map can be configured to show the Earth as either a one-ocean planet or as a one-island planet, without distorting the size of the continents. thumb|caption (image pending) The following year Fuller invented the geodesic dome it was the first building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits; and became a professor at Black Mountain College www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/archives/bmc_web_page/bmc3.htm in North Carolina, which was his first academic appointment. In 1948 he returned to Massachusetts as a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) while teaching summer sessions at Black Mountain, where he became a dean in 1949. He also got involved with the Chicago Institute of Design. The beginning of increased activity Actor Arryck Adams portrays Buckminster Fuller in Elite Theatre Company's 2006 production of Godspell The 1950s saw Fuller's academic schedule begin to increase; his geometry began to be recognized by the scientific community, and he received his first major award. In 1951 Fuller pointed out the similarities between the DNA helix and his tetrahelix model. images of dna and/or tetrahelix.jpg After the geodesic dome was patented in 1954, the U.S. Marine Corps began using the domes for air-lifted housing. Meanwhile, the work of Thomas Malthus is discredited as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization acknowledges that Malthus was wrong (1955). In 1956 Fuller began a long-term relationship with Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIU), with his first visiting lecturer appointment there. Two years later, as he is making his first complete circuit of the Earth in the fulfillment of regular university appointments, Fuller's geometry is found to explain nature's fundamental structuring at the atomic and virus levels by nuclear physicists and molecular biologists. And he is awarded a Gold Medal by the National Architectural Society. And in 1959 he was appointed by the State Department as an engineering representative to the Soviet Union (USSR) in a protocol exchange. He is also appointed as a research professor at SIU and is awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree that year. By 1961 over 2,000 geodesic domes had been produced by over 100 industrial corporations, delivered primarily by air, and installed in 40 countries as well in both polar zones. In a strange twist of irony, Fuller receives a one-year (1962) appointment as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. This begins the rehabilitation of Fuller's Harvard years. 1962 also began the Houston Astrodome debacle in which Fuller did all the preparatory research for the project, but at the last minute the project was given to another company to build. In 1963 the World Congress of Virologists acknowledge that Fuller's formula of frequency leads to the finding of virus protein shells. He publishes four books; and begins involvement with Doxiadis' Delos Symposium as a member and speaker. In 1965 Fuller inaugurated the World Design Science Decade 2 (1965 to 1975) at the meeting of the International Union of Architects in Paris, France. A year later he initiates the World Game 3 at SIU; and lectures scientists and engineers on the commercial spinoffs from space technology at Cape Kennedy (Kennedy Space Center). In 1967, in the ultimate step toward rehabilitation, the Harvard Class of 1917 inducted Fuller into Phi Beta Kappa during their 50th reunion. Meanwhile, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) commissions him to research a tetrahedronal floating city project as he fulfills an appointment as the Harvey Cushing Orator at the Congress of the American Association of Neuro-Surgeons' annual meeting in Chicago. He explained the difference between the human brain and the mind to the 2,000 members of the organization. In 1968, those who read Playboy magazine for the articles, read Fuller's article on The City of the Future. The following year, Fuller led the first public World Game workshop (in New York state); and testifies on the World Game before the US Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations at the invitation of the Chairman, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine. Then Fuller went to India to lecture on planetary planning. After being cited as "Humanist of the Year," Fuller became the Hoyt Fellow at Yale, and receives a Citation of Merit from HUD. Among all his other projects, Fuller was an amateur historian who produced an interesting view of the past based on oceanic trade routes. In 1970 his view of pre-history was supported by archeological discoveries, and he was awarded Stone Age axes from Australia and Finland in recognition of this work. In the meantime, his book I Seem to be a Verb is published by Bantam, and he is installed as "Master Architect for Life" by the national chapter of the Alpha Rho Chi fraternity. In an unprecedented move, in 1971, The New York Times printed Fuller's telegram to Senator Edmund Muskie - it filled the entire OpEd page. In 1972 the special 40th anniversary issue of Architectural Forum, and England's Architectural Design magazines were devoted to Fuller's work; and Playboy interviewed him. Fuller continued to receive an ever-increasing number of awards and honors. In 1974, during his 37th complete circuit of Earth in fulfillment of invitations and academic responsibilities, Fuller gives 150 major addresses. Meanwhile, the Club of Rome reintroduces the ideas of Thomas Malthus within their Limits to Growth report. The following year Fuller published Synergetics, (the result of his 50 years of work on what he claimed to be nature's geometric coordinate system). The book contains an introduction and article by Harvard mathematician Arthur Loeb, who warns that that the book would restimulate wide-spread interest in geometry . While Synergetics is hitting the bookstores, Fuller is named Professor Emeritus at SIU and the University of Pennsylvania; makes his 39th circuit of Earth, and testifies before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1976 Fuller creates the "Jitterbug sculpture"—demonstrating fourth dimensional wave generation. He testifies at the US House hearing on the recovery of the city, and speaks at Habitat: the UN conference on Human Settlements, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. In 1977 Fuller was the first witness at the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Small Business hearings on alternate energy, then left on a Far East lecture tour sponsored by the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency; he also wrote an article, "50 Years Ahead of My Time," for the Saturday Evening Post. In 1978 he testifies before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and describes using satellites to take daily inventories of everything from world resources to global public opinion polls. And then appears on Will Durant's NBC television series, Lessons of History. The last year of the 1970s found Fuller in NYC with EST founder Werner Erhard. They presented their views of the world at Radio City Music Hall before 6,000 people. Erhard made the startling statement that he never considered principles to be important until he met Fuller. Fuller made an equally startling statement, which reflected his life-long concern about the continued existence of the human race. He said to the audience: "To be optimistic about the future you have to know a lot. But to be pessimistic about the future you don't have to know nothing." When asked by a reporter how could one learn what he knows, Fuller simply answered: "Read my books." The last few years of his life demonstrated his dedication to the fate of mankind. In 1980 he traveled to Brazil to view the implementation of industrialization strategies he first described in 1942; was appointed to a Presidential Commission to follow up the Carter-commissioned Global 2000 Report , (which was based on the Limits to Growth report); and was appointed to a congressional committee on the future. 1980 also saw the issue of the Robert Grip-Christopher Kitrick edition of Fuller's Dymaxion sky-ocean world map , which was acknowledged as the largest, most accurate, whole Earth map in history. His books, Critical Path (1981) and Grunch of Giants (1983), are easily accessible overviews of his life's work. But 1983 also saw his wife, Anne, dying of cancer. On July 1st, Buckminster Fuller passed away, and Anne slipped away hours later. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, after completing almost 50 circuits of the planet. Philosophy and world view It is easy to classify Fuller as a Natural Philosopher, (drawing insights from nature with no supernatural intervention). But he was also a metaphysics, (pointing to the essential role of the invisible reality). He always emphasized that he was an average person who had done nothing anyone else couldn't do. Self disciplines The most easily-accessable presentation of Fuller's philosophy and worldview comes from Critical Path in a review of a set of "self disciplines" which he imposed upon himself and used to guide his life. In his early days, Fuller followed the guidance of his elders (parents and relatives) who always said, in effect, "Darling, never mind what you think. Listen. We are trying to teach you." He also encountered an important piece of advice from his grandmother who revealed to him the Golden Rule: "Love thy neighbor as thyself—do unto others as you would they should do unto you." But as he got older his uncles gave him the facts of life, which was the standard belief system of most people during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. "Life is hard," they told him in so many words. "There is nowhere nearly enough life support for everybody on our planet, let alone enough for a comfortable life. If you want to raise a family and have a comfortable life for them, you are going to have to deprive others of the opportunity to survive, and the sooner the better." This was an idea which may as well have come from the mouths of Thomas Malthus , Charles Darwin , and Herbert Spencer . His uncles told him that "Your grandmother's Golden Rule is beautiful, but it doesn't work." Knowi