Subject: [Homestead] Happy birthday to Bucky, a small man who gave hugely
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:20:55 -0700
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.