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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Standing only 5'2" tall, Buckminster Fuller loomed over the twentieth  
century. Admirers affectionately call him Bucky, but the name he gave  
himself was Guinea Pig B. His life, he said, was an experiment.

When he was 32, Buckminster Fuller's life seemed hopeless. He was  
bankrupt and without a job. He was grief stricken over the death of  
his first child and he had a wife and a newborn to support. Drinking  
heavily, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he decided decided that  
his life was not his to throw away: It belonged to the universe. He  
embarked on “an experiment to discover what the little, penniless,  
unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all  
humanity.”

To this end, Buckminster Fuller spent the next half century searching  
for "ways of doing more with less" so that all people could be fed  
and sheltered. Although he never obtained a degree in architecture,  
he was an architect and engineer who designed revolutionary  
structures. His famous Dymaxion House was a pre-fabricated, pole- 
supported dwelling. His Dymaxion car was a streamlined, three-wheeled  
vehicle with the engine in the rear. His Dymaxion Air-Ocean Map  
projected a spherical world as a flat surface with no visible  
distortion.

But Fuller is perhaps most famous for his creation of the geodesic  
dome - a remarkable, sphere-like structure based on theories of  
"energetic-synergetic geometry'' which he developed during WWII.  
Efficient and economical, the geodesic dome was widely hailed as a  
possible solution to world housing shortages.

During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller wrote 28 books and was  
awarded 25 United States patents. Although his Dymaxion car never  
caught on and his design for geodesic domes is rarely used for  
residential dwellings, Fuller made his mark in areas of architecture,  
mathematics, philosophy, religion, urban development and design.

http://architecture.about.com/od/fullerindex/

Links to stuff about Bucky:

http://architecture.about.com/od/fullerindex/

• "Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

• "You must choose between making money and making sense. The two are  
mutually exclusive."
-- Buckminster Fuller in 1983

http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-fuller-quotes.htm