Contents

Contents

1 Pelican Books

2 The Buckminster Fuller Reader

3 R. Buckminster Fuller, who was born in Milton, Mass., in 1895 and educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard, is currently Research Professor in the Department of Design at Southern Illinois University. Although he has no formal academic qualifications, he has been awarded honorary doctorates in design, art, science and the humanities from the Universities of Carolina, Michigan, Washington and Southern Illinois and from Rollins College. He has been visiting professor, lecturer and critic at over a hundred universities and colleges in the United States, and has lectured throughout the world. In this country, he has lectured at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal College of Art, the Universities of Cambridge and Liverpool and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Among the many international honours he has received is the R.I.B.A.’s Gold Medal for Architecture, presented to him in 1968.

4 Buckminster Fuller is the inventor of the Dymaxion House, the Dymaxion Car, the Dymaxion Bathroom and the Dymaxion World Map, as well as being the inventor-discoverer of energetic-synergetic geometry, geodesic structures and Tensegrity structures. Buckminster Fuller’s first book, Nine Chains to the Moon, was published in 1938, and subsequent works have included No More Second-Hand God and Education Automation.

5 The Buckminster Fuller Reader

6 Edited and introduced by James Meller

7 Penguin Books

8 Penguin Books Ltd, Hannondsworth, Middlesex, England

9 Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

10 This collection first published by Jonathan Cape 1970 Published in Pelican Books 1972

11 Copyright ľ R. Buckminster Fuller, 1970

12 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd,

13 London, Reading and Fakenham

14 Set in Intertype Times

15 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

16 Contents

17Introductory Note by James Metier 11

1.

Buckminster Fuller Chronofile 13

2.

Margaret Fuller’s Prophecy 39

3.

Influences on My Work 44

4.

Later Development of My Work 69

5.

I Figure 98

6.

Energetic Geometry 130

7.

Fluid Geography 133

8.

Designing a New Industry 153

9.

Earth, Inc. 231

10.

Universal Requirements of a Dwelling Advantage 252

11.

Design for Survival—Plus 270

12.

Preview of Building 285

13.

Total Thinking 310

14.

The Comprehensive Man 329

15.

Prime Design 341

16.

Continuous Man 347

17.

The Designers and the Politicians 370

18.

World Planning 377

18Explanatory Notes 385

19Bibliography 387

20Index 391

21 List of Illustrations

22 The Air Ocean World Town Plan, 1927

23 Sketches by Fuller of a Ten Deck Building, 1927

24 Dymaxion House, 1927--9

25 4D Dymaxion Car, 1933--4

26 The Dymaxion Bathroom, 1937

27 The Wichita House, 1944--6

28 Title page from Fuller’s Undersea Island Patent, 1963

29 World Map on Dymaxion Projection, 1944

30 Profile of the Industrial Revolution, 1946

31 Ford Rotunda Dome, 1953

32 Title page from the first Geodesic Dome Patent, 1954

33 ‘Pinecone’ plydome, 1957

34 Bamboo dome, 1960

35 Fuller Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959

36 Expo ‘67 Dome