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R Buckminster Fuller
Times obituary
Philosopher of a Technological Future
Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, the American inventor, engineer, architect-designer, and scientifically oriented philosopher, died in a hospital in Los Angeles on July 1. He was 87.
Though not an architect in the strictest sense, Buckminster Fuller came increasingly in later life to identify himself as such. One of the most controversial architectural figures of our time, he produced designs for unprecedented types of structure which reflected his belief and optimism in the benefits of modern technology. Thus, his Dymaxion House of 1927 saw the modern home not in terms of a walled structure but of technology servicing the human life lived within it.
The Dymaxion three-wheeled car of 1932 similarly rejected the traditional coach maker's craft to produce a futuristic design, giving itself totally to machine-made streamlining.
Perhaps in the general mind he will be most readily associated with the geodesic dome, another result of his relentless pursuit of architectural forms along the path of mathematical logic. Thousands of these structures were erected, the most spectacular being the US Pavilion at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.
But perhaps not even such a list of achievements is quite sufficient to describe Buckminster Fuller's extraordinary impact on applied science and on the popular mind. An oracular speaker about the relationship of architecture to science and technology, he and his achievement were of a nature to fire the imagination with an optimism about the benefits of technology to man, which remained a potent force in spite of the undoubted and damning evidence of the harm perpetrated in so many other spheres than his own by that technology
As such, he attracted epithets such as "the Comprehensive Designer" and "the first poet of technology." His best-known book, with the intriguing title Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, continued in 1969 to preach his vision of a new generation of human beings capable of mastering the ecological challenges facing man. And as if to underscore the civilizing nature of his technological manifesto, he endorsed his other achievements by serving as Professor of Poetry at Harvard and publishing verse himself. Richard Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1895. He came of old New England stock and inherited that blend of romantic idealism and Yankee practicality which made him the spiritual heir to Benjamin Franklin and Emerson.
His formal education, though it encompassed two years at Harvard, was scanty, but his boyhood enthusiasm for the boat-building and fishing skills of coastal Maine not only led him to serve as an officer in the US Navy from 1917 to 1919, but introduced him to the atmosphere of applied mathematics and related techniques that permeated his later theories, and his early inventions, such as the Dymaxion House with its mast and wire construction, reflected this marine enthusiasm. But that experiment, whose name was derived from the words 'dynamism' ('maximum'), was in real sense a machine for living in a ship with few of the aesthetic pretensions of its European contemporaries.
His work on it bred in "Buckie" Fuller an increasing antagonism to traditional building techniques and to an architecture dependent on them, and made him seek more and more for technological and industrial solutions to the problems of shelter.
For 20 years, Fuller explored the possibilities of industrialised housing, but when in 1946 the Wichita project, a sophisticated version of the Dymaxion House, which, like the more modest 'prefabs' made in the United Kingdom, was intended to answer the housing needs of the American nation through the conversion of its Second World War factories, was abandoned at the prototype stage, he turned to other interests.
Just as his Dymaxion research had led to new thinking in terms of domestic equipment, the Wichita project led to the Geodesic domes, to which he devoted so much of his later life. These spherical structures, of light metal and plastic, based on great circle mathematics (whose practical application was questioned as much by some architects as their structure was by many mathematicians), were in theory without limitation of size, and Fuller saw them as a universal and inexpensive form of shelter to cover everything from houses to cities.
In practice, their application was expensive and limited to rather special needs, such as the domes he designed for the US Air Force's early warning system establishments in the Arctic region. Others occupied a more central position on the human stage, in particular the 250-foot-diameter example which served as the US pavilion at the 1967 International Exhibition in Montreal.
It may be thought, however, that Fuller's greatest contribution lay in the field of education. He was a compulsive talker and he channeled this trait into magical extempore lectures of extraordinary duration, often of up to a day or more, with breaks for meals. Through these, he transmitted an enthusiasm for his ideas to generation after generation of students across the world.
Among his many honours, perhaps none was more appropriate than his appointment in 1962 as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. He received honorary degress from many academic bodies, was an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and in 1968 was awarded the institute's Royal Gold Medal. He had been in London only recently, speaking at the ceremony for the RIBA's 1983 Gold Medal Award.
He held a chair at Southern Illinois University from 1959 to 1975, when he was made professor emeritus.
He was the author of many books, the first being Nine Chains to the Moon (1938). Subsequent titles include No More Second-Hand God and Education Automation. In 1970, the first collection of his writings to be published in Britain, entitled Times obituary, appeared.
He married Anne Hewlett in 1917. They had two daughters.
Philosopher of a Technological Future
Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, the American inventor, engineer, architect-designer, and scientifically oriented philosopher, died in a hospital in Los Angeles on July 1. He was 87.
Though not an architect in the strictest sense, Buckminster Fuller came increasingly in later life to identify himself as such. One of the most controversial architectural figures of our time, he produced designs for unprecedented types of structure which reflected his belief and optimism in the benefits of modern technology. Thus, his Dymaxion House of 1927 saw the modern home not in terms of a walled structure but of technology servicing the human life lived within it.
The Dymaxion three-wheeled car of 1932 similarly rejected the traditional coach maker's craft to produce a futuristic design, giving itself totally to machine-made streamlining.
Perhaps in the general mind he will be most readily associated with the geodesic dome, another result of his relentless pursuit of architectural forms along the path of mathematical logic. Thousands of these structures were erected, the most spectacular being the US Pavilion at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.
But perhaps not even such a list of achievements is quite sufficient to describe Buckminster Fuller's extraordinary impact on applied science and on the popular mind. An oracular speaker about the relationship of architecture to science and technology, he and his achievement were of a nature to fire the imagination with an optimism about the benefits of technology to man, which remained a potent force in spite of the undoubted and damning evidence of the harm perpetrated in so many other spheres than his own by that technology
As such, he attracted epithets such as "the Comprehensive Designer" and "the first poet of technology." His best-known book, with the intriguing title Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, continued in 1969 to preach his vision of a new generation of human beings capable of mastering the ecological challenges facing man. And as if to underscore the civilizing nature of his technological manifesto, he endorsed his other achievements by serving as Professor of Poetry at Harvard and publishing verse himself. Richard Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1895. He came of old New England stock and inherited that blend of romantic idealism and Yankee practicality which made him the spiritual heir to Benjamin Franklin and Emerson.
His formal education, though it encompassed two years at Harvard, was scanty, but his boyhood enthusiasm for the boat-building and fishing skills of coastal Maine not only led him to serve as an officer in the US Navy from 1917 to 1919, but introduced him to the atmosphere of applied mathematics and related techniques that permeated his later theories, and his early inventions, such as the Dymaxion House with its mast and wire construction, reflected this marine enthusiasm. But that experiment, whose name was derived from the words 'dynamism' ('maximum'), was in real sense a machine for living in a ship with few of the aesthetic pretensions of its European contemporaries.
His work on it bred in "Buckie" Fuller an increasing antagonism to traditional building techniques and to an architecture dependent on them, and made him seek more and more for technological and industrial solutions to the problems of shelter.
For 20 years, Fuller explored the possibilities of industrialised housing, but when in 1946 the Wichita project, a sophisticated version of the Dymaxion House, which, like the more modest 'prefabs' made in the United Kingdom, was intended to answer the housing needs of the American nation through the conversion of its Second World War factories, was abandoned at the prototype stage, he turned to other interests.
Just as his Dymaxion research had led to new thinking in terms of domestic equipment, the Wichita project led to the Geodesic domes, to which he devoted so much of his later life. These spherical structures, of light metal and plastic, based on great circle mathematics (whose practical application was questioned as much by some architects as their structure was by many mathematicians), were in theory without limitation of size, and Fuller saw them as a universal and inexpensive form of shelter to cover everything from houses to cities.
In practice, their application was expensive and limited to rather special needs, such as the domes he designed for the US Air Force's early warning system establishments in the Arctic region. Others occupied a more central position on the human stage, in particular the 250-foot-diameter example which served as the US pavilion at the 1967 International Exhibition in Montreal.
It may be thought, however, that Fuller's greatest contribution lay in the field of education. He was a compulsive talker and he channeled this trait into magical extempore lectures of extraordinary duration, often of up to a day or more, with breaks for meals. Through these, he transmitted an enthusiasm for his ideas to generation after generation of students across the world.
Among his many honours, perhaps none was more appropriate than his appointment in 1962 as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. He received honorary degress from many academic bodies, was an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and in 1968 was awarded the institute's Royal Gold Medal. He had been in London only recently, speaking at the ceremony for the RIBA's 1983 Gold Medal Award.
He held a chair at Southern Illinois University from 1959 to 1975, when he was made professor emeritus.
He was the author of many books, the first being Nine Chains to the Moon (1938). Subsequent titles include No More Second-Hand God and Education Automation. In 1970, the first collection of his writings to be published in Britain, entitled Times obituary, appeared.
He married Anne Hewlett in 1917. They had two daughters.
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