Richard
Buckminster Fuller and His Beloved Geodesic Dome July 12,
1895 - July 1, 1983
Inventors are among the few people
on this planet who have the ability to change life for all of us. When
this ability is combined with a true love of mankind's and the planet's
future, it is truly a sign of a great soul. Richard Buckminster Fuller,
inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, designer, poet, and philosopher
was a great soul and visionary who believed technology could save the World
from itself, providing it was properly used.
In 1927, 'Bucky'
Fuller had little reason to be optimistic about the future. The
year found Bucky jobless and broke with a wife and newborn daughter Alegra,
to support. His first daughter Alexandra had died four years previous and
Buckminster Fuller was still living in mourning. He had attempted suicide
and was drinking heavily. In the darkness of that year, Buckminster Fuller
went through a spiritual rebirth that changed the course of his life. He
decided to dedicate his life to finding out how much difference one man
could make in the world.
Renouncing personal and financial
gain, Buckminster Fuller entered two years of seclusion to begin in his
own words:
"the search
for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution
of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with
less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more"
From 1927 on, Buckminster Fuller
considered his life a living-experiment; he even gave himself the nickname
'Guinea
Pig B' to denote his new life-purpose.
Buckminster Fuller
left his two-year seclusion with a new word on his lips 'Dymaxion', a contraction
of the words 'dynamic', 'maximum' and 'ion' that to him represented resource-efficient
and self-sustaining technologies. Under the Dymaxion ideal, Fuller developed
a series of inventions from lightweight homes, streamlined cars to the
geodesic dome.
Highlights of Buckminster
Fuller's Inventions and Achievements The Geodesic Dome
Bucky's most famous
invention (patented in 1954) was the geodesic dome.
The geodesic dome
combines the sphere, the most efficient container of volume per square
foot, with the tetrahedron, which provides the greatest strength for the
least volume of weight.
The geodesic dome
can withstand winds of 210 mph, while at the same time it is light and
easily transportable.
Quick to build,
a geodesic dome can be put up in hours.
A geodesic dome
can withstand hurricanes and earthquakes far better than conventional buildings.
The geodesic dome
is the only structure that actually gets stronger, lighter in density and
cheaper per square foot with size.
Over 200,000 of
such geodesic domes have been built.
People use geodesic
domes as homes and shelter from pole to pole.
Famous Geodesic
Domes: Walt Disney Epcot
Center: Expo 67:
Click here for a QuickTime
movie of a flying geodesic dome (2606k)
The
Birth of the Geodesic Dome: How Bucky Did It by Lloyd Steven Sieden
(The Futurist, Vol.23, No.6, November - December 1989) article adapted
from Buckminster Fuller's Universe: An Appreciation by Lloyd Steven
Sieden
Geodesic
Domes Great sites to read more about history,
geometry, manufacturers, prototypes and other resources for domes.