Richard Buckminster Fuller by John McClish

A Man With A Big Dome

Richard Buckminster Fuller (Bucky) was not a trained architect; but he was a designer who was ahead of his time and had significant impact on the architectural community. He designed many things, including an aerodynamic vehicle when people were still driving boxes down the road and the Geodesic Dome, a structure light enough to be flown in on a helicopter but still had the ability to withstand hurricane winds and had no internal support structure.

Bucky was born on July 12,1895, in Milton, Massachusetts. Fuller was born with extreme undiagnosed nearsightedness. As Bucky describes in a lecture at the University of Oregon in July 1963, “His visual perception was limited to fuzzy shapes, and he compensated for that disability by relying on his other senses as well as his independent thinking for an understanding of his environment.” He received his first eyeglasses at the age of four but just before he did, “Bucky fabricated what would be the first of many futuristic structures” (Sieden, 6). In kindergarten his teacher gave all the children dried peas and toothpicks for constructing buildings. All of the other children began making rectangle buildings like the ones they have seen throughout their daily lives. Due to the fact that Bucky had not actually seen these buildings he created something that was dramatically different. As Hugh Kenner describes in Bucky: A Guided Tour of Buckminster Fuller, “his framework was composed of stable triangles and was, in fact, a rudimentary model of the octet truss (pictured below), which he would invent and patent in 1961” (Kenner, 57).

He spent his childhood summers on Bear Island, off the coast of Maine. He loved spending his summers at Bear Island and it was there he learned an appreciation for nature. Many of his inventions mirrored what he later designated as 'Natural Technology', employing the efficient techniques he perceived within Nature.

When Fuller was eight, he produced his first invention, a mechanical oar patterned after the motion of jellyfish. This invention expedited his four mile trek to pick up mail and supplies. "It consisted of a tepee-like cone mounted on the end of a pole and resembled an inside-out umbrella. Standing at the rear of his boat, Fuller would pull the pole toward him through a large iron ring attached to the rear of the boat. As the peak of the umbrella-like invention pointed toward the boat, it displayed little resistance. However, when it pushed backward into the water, the cone opened, propelling the boat forward” (Sieden, 10). Fuller also discovered that his trips became much safer and more enjoyable because he could now see everything in front of him, where in a normal rowing position your back is turned to the direction of travel.

Fuller attended Milton Academy in Milton Massachusetts from 1904 until 1913. He had ancestors who had been prominent colonial clergymen and lawyers that had all graduated from Harvard including his father. So it was natural for him to continue this tradition and he entered Harvard in 1913. However, it didn’t take long to find out he just did not quite fit in to the Harvard mold. During this time Fuller began dating an actress named Marilyn Miller. When the show that she was in moved to New York he withdrew the money that was supposed to be for tuition, lodging and expenses, skipped his midyear exams and went to visit her. He treated the entire chorus of a Broadway musical comedy to a champagne dinner and spent all of his money. As a result of this behavior Harvard expelled him, and his family sent him off to work as an apprentice mechanic at textile Company in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Here he did extremely well and, “…developed a deep respect for technology, and a practical understanding of metallurgy” (Gorman, 20). Actually, he did so well he was even invited back to Harvard.

In 1917 Fuller joined the Navy. “The period he spent in the Naval Academy at Annapolis between 1918 and 1919 was the source of much of Fuller’s technical knowledge” (Gorman, 20). The time he spent in the Navy inspired creative and broad-scale thinking. He also gained experience with the newest technologies. Fuller was extremely impressed with naval architecture. Fuller perceived that the Navy was able to do more with less. “A 10,000 ton “heavy” cruiser carrying 8-inch guns, a large secondary battery, torpedo tubes and amour plate, in addition to water, fuel, generators, and food for several hundred men, and powerful engines, designed to resist the stress of moving through huge waves, weighed less than twentieth of a building that had to contain none of these things” (Gorman, 21). This efficiency of material and workmanship is one of the things that led to Fuller’s philosophy and vision of an engineered, sustainable future.

Bucky’s first venture into the building industry did not go very well. His father in law, James Monroe Hewlet, invented a new kind of hollow building block and Bucky discovered the type of cement to use for it. They sold about 240 houses but the company went down in financial ruin. Still, Fuller was convinced that mass production of housing was feasible. Fuller was drawn to the aircraft engineering and he disliked the bulkiness of current housing as well as how long it took to build a house. His solution was a house built on tension rather than compression. He wanted to create a building that could be massed produced and ultimately be light enough to be flown to its destination. In order to be flown in the building weight would have to be low. To keep the weight low meant he needed to use lighter materials that would not be able to support a conventional design. Tension seemed to be the answer. The first structures were hexagonal and they were suspended from a central mast. The rooms surrounded the mast, which contained heating and air-conditioning as well as other items. The Dymaxion house was supposed to be fully automated, solar-powered, deliverable by air, and low-priced. It was said to be priced about the same price per pound as a 1929 automobile. However, the major problem was getting it off the ground. To begin construction you would have to tool up the manufacturing plant which would cost in the billions. “Fuller argued, if for his new Model A Henry Ford had to make just one unit, that car would have cost $43,000,000 but the production of the second car would only cost $500” Gorman, 49. There was really no housing industry at this time, so finding an investor was difficult. Fuller was able to build a couple Damaxion buildings here and there but obviously was never able to mass produce them as he initially intended.

In the 1930s Fuller designed the Dymaxian car. The Damaxion car utilized a Ford V-8 engine, front wheel drive, and a single wheel in the rear for steering. This vehicle was designed in a tear drop shape for its aerodynamic properties. The vehicle was supposedly able to drive at 120 miles per hour, get 40 miles to the gallon, and carry eleven passengers. This design was revolutionary considering the cars at this time were all shaped like boxes. Yet this unusual shape may have also contributed to its downfall. In 1933 the vehicle was involved in an accident and the newspapers wrote articles with head lines such as “Freak Auto Turns Over With Graph Passengers” (Gorman, 62). The crash was actually caused by another vehicle, but even with a newspaper retraction, perspective investors steered clear of this three wheeled dynamo (ha ha).

Probably the thing that Bucky Fuller is most famous for is the Geodesic Dome. He developed the dome in the 1940s. This structure was completely different than his previous buildings. “While Fuller’s previous building-conceptions generally had an “endoskeleton” housing a “central nervous system”, like a human being, geodesic domes had an “exoskeleton”, like a sea urchin or egg” (Gorman, 115). This “exoskeleton” (Gorman, 115) is achieved by the inherent stability of triangles.

The force of the building is distributed in all directions throughout the entire structure. A very interesting yet unintended factor achieved in the geodesic dome is that the dome will cool itself. It was discovered that even if the when the skin was made of sheet metal and hot enough to fry an egg, the dome would stay cool. Warm air gets drawn out of the unit toward the lower edge and cooler denser air gets sucked in through the top of the dome. “Geodesic domes are the strongest, lightest, most resource-efficient shelter available today” (Baldwin, 118).

Buckminster Fuller created and designed some very interesting things throughout his lifetime and he was way ahead of his time in these designs. Yet, I do believe that the Damaxion house and car would have had difficulty surviving even if production had started. I just think that certain elements were not quite thought all the way through. The Damaxion house seemed like a good idea and also cheap to make, but what about stability and maintenance? The structures main support was in one spot, the center. If something were to happen, a crack for instance, what could you do? Also, the tension wires were outside, how long would it take for the wires to corrode and need to be replaced, and could they be replaced easily or would part of the structure be weakened?

I thought the car was just ingenious for it’s time. The aerodynamics were just astonishing when you look at the other vehicles of the time. I do believe there would be some safety issues though. The vehicle had front wheel drive yet the steering cam e from single wheel in the rear. With the shape of the vehicle that puts the engine toward the front to middle of the vehicle. A blow-out or something happening to that rear wheel would just be devastating. You only have three point of contact with the road and less weight on the steering wheel. With only three points of contact and such a wide body over that small base a rollover seems inevitable. A solution may be just adding a rear axle with two wheels. The axle does not need to be as long as the front axle but spreading out the points of contact would make the vehicle significantly safer.

The Geodesic domes and the octet truss are just remarkable. It makes me want to build a house using these structures. You could use fewer and lighter materials and still have a stronger structure, who doesn’t want that. The cooling effect of the dome would be great here in Arizona, you can drop the temperature of your house fifteen degrees without running an air conditioner. I wouldn’t mind saving some money.

Home Sweet Dome.

Fuller’s designs were ahead of his time. If he were around today I believe his ideas would have been accepted much more willingly. I respect Fuller for his ability to see things differently and then act on his intuition. This is how new and wonderful things get created everyday. If no one was willing to try something new, we would never see anything new. How sad would that be?

Works Cited

Baldwin, J.. Bucky Works, Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas For Today, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996

Fuller R. Buckminster, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1-12 July 1962

Gorman, Michael. Buckminster Fuller, Designing for Mobility, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2005

Kenner, Hugh. Bucky: A Guided Tour of Buckminster Fuller , New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1973

Sieden, Lloyd. Buckminster Fuller’s Universe, New York: Plenum Press, 1989