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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Tribute to Buckminster Fuller</title>
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<h1>BUCKMINSTER FULLER</h1>
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<div>
<h2>A Tribute Page</h2>
</div>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/buckminsterfuller_mainphoto.jpg" alt="Photo of Buckminster Fuller outside Montreal Biosphere, Canada">
<figcaption>Buckminster Fuller outside the Montreal World Fair's Dome (now the Montreal Biosphère)</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p>Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1985 - July 1,1983) was an internationally recognised visionary American
architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, philosopher, critic of work, and futurist.
Fuller developed numerous futuristic inventions, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Dymaxion prototype car</li>
<li>The widely known geodesic dome</li>
<li>The Dymaxion house</li>
<li>The Dymaxion map of the world and World Game</li>
</ul>
<p>As an author, he published more than 30 books, including "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth",
and coined terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" (a portmanteau of the words <span class="bold">dy</span>namic,
<span class="bold">max</span>imum, and tens<span class="bold">ion</span>), "synergetics", and "tensegrity". His work was often based around the idea of doing more
with less. His concepts were championed by the hippy movement in the USA in the 1960s, with a number of
families and artists living in geodesic domes, such as at communes like
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_City" target='_blank'>Drop City</a>, and he became a guru
of the design, architecture, and 'alternative' communities.</p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/dropcitycommune_photo.jpg" alt="Photo of Drop City commune, USA">
<figcaption>Drop City commune</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He influenced the publication of the
<span class="italics"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog" target='_blank'>Whole Earth Catalogue</a></span>, which was popular among the hippy community. His legacy lives on today, with the
Buckminster Fuller Institute continuing to support pioneering work in design science.
He has had a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene" target='_blank'>fullerene</a>, the <a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/buckminsterfullerene/" target='_blank'>
Buckminsterfullerene</a>, named after him, and received numerous awards,
including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented to him in 1983 by then-USA President Ronald Reagan.</p>
<h3>Dymaxion Protype Car</h3>
<p>The futuristic-looking dymaxion car featured three wheels, and was designed for increased fuel efficiency.
Fuller envisaged the Dymaxion car as an "Omni-Medium Transport" that might be used one day to fly, land,
and drive. The car could transport up to 11 passengers, reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour,
and ran 30 miles per gallon.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-car" target='_blank'>More on the Dymaxion car</a></p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/dymaxion_car.jpg" alt="Photo of Dymaxion Car replica">
<figcaption>Dymaxion car replica</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>Geodesic Domes</h3>
<p>Fuller's geodesic domes have been used as parts of military radar stations, civil buildings,
environmental protest camps, and, in the case of the
<a href="https://espacepourlavie.ca/en/biosphere" target='_blank'>Montreal Biosphère</a>,
now a museum dedicated to the environment. The latter is housed in the former United States pavilion constructed for Expo 67,
and contained a train system which would guide people through the structure (which can be seen clearly
in the photo at the top of this page). However, a fire in 1976 burnt down much of the building's transparent acrylic bubble
(though the hard steel truss structure survived), and it would remain closed for years. It finally opened
as an environmental museum, though without the original train system.
A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally
rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic domes able to
withstand very heavy loads for their size. Fuller discovered that if a spherical structure was created
from triangles, it would have unparalleled strength. Fuller envisaged a giant geodesic dome encasing
a part of Manhattan, New York City, and created the image below to demonstrate his vision. The idea was never taken up
by the New York City authorities at the time, but with climate change leading to cities heating, perhaps one
day city authorities will have no choice.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/geodesic-domes" target='_blank'>More on geodesic domes</a></p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/buckminsterfuller_nyc_dome.jpg" alt="Visualisation imagining giant geodesic dome over Manhattan, New York City">
<figcaption>Fuller created this image of part of Manhattan encased in a giant geodesic dome</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/montreal_biosphere.jpg" alt="Photo of Montreal Biosphere, Canada">
<figcaption>Present-day Montreal Biosphère © Dominic Simpson</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>The Dymaxion House</h3>
<p>Built in 1945, the Dymaxion House was Fuller's solution to the need for a mass-produced, affordable,
easily transportable and environmentally efficient house. The house used tension suspension from a
central vertical stainless-steel strut on a single foundation, and was heated and cooled by natural
means due to its round shape. The roof was supported by spokes, similar to a bicycle wheel, hanging from
it, while beams radiating out supported the floor. The roof, ceiling, and floor were formed from sheet
metal aluminium. It could be shipped worldwide in its own metal tube.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-house" target='_blank'>More on the Dymaxion house</a></p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/dymaxion_house.jpg" alt="Photo of Dymaxion House, USA">
<figcaption>Dymaxion house</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>Dymaxion Map of the World</h3>
<p>Fuller designed the 'Dymaxion map', or 'Fuller map', of the world. This map was intended to be projected
onto an icosahedron, so that it could show an approximation of the Earth as a three-dimensional object
(though it could be unfolded and flattened to a conventional two-dimensional map).
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/dymaxionprojection_map.jpg" alt="Image of Dymaxion map projection of the World, created by Buckminster Fuller">
<figcaption>Dymaxion map projection of the World</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fuller claimed that the map had an advantage of the established Mercator projection on a flat surface, in that there was less
distortion of relative size of areas. For example, in the Mercator projection, the further away from
the equator a country is, the larger it is represented. Thus, as you can see in the Mercator
projection below, Greenland, Canada, Russia, and Antarctica,
while still large landmasses, are shown as disproportionately large compared to countries near the Equator,
when taking into account their real landmass (Greenland appears as three times larger than its actual
geographical size). By contrast, the Fuller map, especially as a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomonic_projection" target='_blank'>non-gnomonic projection</a>,
addressed this discrepancy somewhat.</p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/mercatorprojection_square.jpg" alt="Image of Mercator map projection of the World">
<figcaption>Mercator map projection of the World</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Apart from Fuller's Dymaxion map, the Hobo-Dyer equal-area projection map also addresses the North-South
(and East-West) distortion, but using a two-dimensions standard map, which clarifies the real size
of countries.
As you can see from the Hobo-Dyer map below, the map of the world now looks very different, with Africa in particular
vastly bigger.
</p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/hobo_dyer_projection.jpg" alt="Image of Hobo Dyer map projection of the World">
<figcaption>Hobo-Dyer map projection of the World</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>World Game</h3>
<p>The World Game (sometimes called the World Peace Game)
was an educational simulation developed by Fuller in 1961 that was designed to help create solutions
to problems such as overpopulation and uneven global distribution of wealth and resources.
Utilising Fuller's map, the game required a group of players to cooperatively solve a set of
metaphorical scenarios with a holistic "total world" view.</p>
<figure class="photopicturewrapper">
<img src="images/buckminsterfuller_worldgame.jpg" alt="Photo of Buckminster Fuller with the World Game">
<figcaption>Fuller with the World Game</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.bfi.org/product/dymaxion-map" target='_blank'>More on the Dymaxion map</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/world-game/">More on the World Game</a></p>
</section>
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<h2>© Site design by Dominic Simpson 2022</h2>
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