Buckminster Fuller -- A Personal View

CDHSer Ken Siegal spoke at the April meeting on R. Buckminster Fuller who, among many other things, designed the Geodesic Dome, coined the phrase "think globally and act locally," and developed the principles of "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science" (which the Buckminster Fuller Institute describes as the attempt to anticipate and solve humanity's major problems through the highest technology by providing “more and more life support for everybody, with less and less resources.”

The audience was treated to a fascinating discussion of Fuller along with many anecdotes about the man and visual aids from Ken's collection of books, maps, and colorful geometric objects. A lively discussion followed the presentation during which Ken treated us to uncountable additional interesting and humorous facts about Buckminster Fuller.

Born in 1895, Buckminster Fuller had poor eyesight from an early age. During this time, he used his senses of smell and touch to compensate. It wasn't until he was four that he got glasses, but he had already begun designing things. These included and geometric sculptures in kindergarten which were quite different from the other pupils' and later an alternative to a boat paddle. At the age of 13 he began saving all his letters and notes in a chronofile which he continued until his death many years later in 1983.

While in the Navy, he designed a winch large enough to lift planes out of the water. A traditional form of education was not of interest to Fuller, who dropped out of Harvard and began working in a factory. He married in 1917 and by 1927, having endured the death of a child, the loss of a job, and the resulting depression, he decided to dedicate himself to figuring out how the universe worked and how this knowledge could benefit humanity.

After spending several years quietly thinking, he wrote a book. In fact, in his lifetime, he wrote 28 books, was awarded 25 U.S. Patents, invented the Geodesic dome, and received many honorary doctorates and architectural and design awards. A story Ken shared about one of Fuller's patents certainly highlights the "always thinking" aspect of Fuller. It seems that one of his patent applications was criticized for not being in the proper ink format. Fuller had to explain that he had only come up with his idea three days previously and thus his draftsman had no time to perfect the penmanship.

One main feature of Buckminster Fuller's design approach was his ability to think of structures as systems rather than just objects. He saw the larger picture and was always thinking in a way that was truly ahead of his time. The element of surprise was important to him and he was delighted when the unexpected happened in his experiments. Geodesic domes are unique in that they involve both compression and tension, which are opposites. They are easy and quick to construct and the larger they are, the stronger they become.

The main theme running through Fuller’s   various projects was his optimism that humanity's problems could be solved by figuring out how the universe really worked. He felt we were stuck in outdated modes of thinking. He was troubled by humanity's tendency to embrace "survival of the fittest" attitudes and respond to population concerns in the wrong way. He believed that there were enough resources to sustain population if we learned the proper way to harness them. He also believed humanity needed to overcome the traditional concepts that divide us into separate camps (such as countries, which Fuller referred to as "bloodclots," and religions, etc.). Furthermore, he felt there were ways that resources could be put to better use so that people could live as they wanted, rather than slavishly work for a living.

Much more information about Buckminster Fuller can be obtained at the Buckminster Fuller Institute website: www.bfi.org.