Born on January 9th (118 years ago), let’s remember visionary and interdisciplinary architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, the rock star of the American architecture world of the 60s. Through self-promoting his utopian geodesic domes, had become the guru of the futuristic movement of the moment. When MoMA presented Fuller’s ‘Dome over Manhattan’ project, a transparent canopy covering the majority of the island (below), he was hailed as the star of the new phase of modernism. Inventing the Dome in 1947, it was a structure that did not require any inner columns because of the way in which it was structured, of a network of rods arranged in diagonal patterns. Fuller’s ultimate achievement was his design of the American exhibition at the Expo ’67 in Montreal World’s Fair, where he erected an enormous structure, the largest of all of his executed geodesic domes (above). He sought to solve global problems related to housing, shelter, transportation, energy, and poverty, and authored 28 books. His legacy has been carried by generations of designers, architects, and scientists, who have recognized him as a pioneer in the field of sustainability. His super futuristic streamlined Dymaxion Car of 1933 (coined to suggest dynamic + maximum), which he engineered to make a full turn within the radius of its own length, was never put into production, yet has captured the imagination of automobile lovers and was recently reproduced in green by Sir Norman Foster. He equipped his Dymaxion House, where he aimed to create a sustainable and inexpensive dwelling, with a compost-based methane heating system, a wind power generator, and a recirculating greywater plumbing system. It looked like a metal circus tent, no less futuristic than the car, and the inhabitants, Fuller promised, would be sheltered from “fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, electrical storms.”
Dome over Manhattan
Dymaxion House