Buckminster Fuller, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1970
Born: July 12, 1895; Milton, Massachusetts, USA
Died: 9883;

Quote
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease.


Projects
• 1967: Geodesic Dome at US Pavilion at Expo '67, Montreal, Canada
• 1960: Climatron, St. Louis, Mo.
• 1938: Union Tank Car Repair Shop, Baton Rouge, La.
• 1933: Dymaxion House


Biography
From very early on, Richard Buckminster Fuller had a passion and a talent for designing and building things, often using materials he found in nature. He went to the Milton Academy in Massachusetts and then studied at Harvard briefly; however, he was expelled from Harvard twice, he neither completed his studies there nor received any formal technical training. For several years afterwards, he apprenticed at different companies.

Fuller attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1917, and during World War I he served in as a radio operator on board a ship. He also was an editor and a crash-boat commander at this time. After he was discharged, he gained management experience in a meat-packing business and a trucking firm.

In 1922, Fuller established the Stockade Building System, but after it failed, he and his young family fell into severe financial hardship. During this period, his four-year-old daughter Alexandra died of pneumonia. Fuller blamed her death on the inferior living conditions in the Chicago housing situation his family had landed in because of his unemployment. Desperate and near suicide, he decided to begin “an experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.”

He went to New York and founded the 4-D Company in 1927. There he developed his wide-ranging ideas and design concepts, working to develop solutions for the many difficulties society was facing, especially in the realm of housing and transportation issues. Fuller recorded his ideas and his findings in a diary and in 28 books. In the early 1930s, he edited and published Shelter magazine.

One of Fuller’s proposed solutions to the housing problems was his Dymaxion house, a building that was prefabricated, portable, and supported by a pole. During the 1940s, Fuller began developing his concept of the geodesic dome and in 1949 became president of Geodesics, Inc., in Forest Hills, N.Y. However, the geodesic dome isn’t often used for housing because of inherent problems in its design as a residential building.

During the 1960s, Fuller taught at Southern Illinois University. About this time, he also began lecturing worldwide about design from his unique perspective as a designer, scientist, and author. At the International Union of Architects conference in Paris, he opened the World Design Science Decade, devoted to considering the vast social issues facing humankind and working to solve them through scientific principles.

Buckminster Fuller was honored by many institutions, receiving many awards including the RIBA Gold Medal in 1968, 44 honorary degrees, and 28 patent awards. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fuller’s driving passion was how to improve human life without unnecessarily taxing the earth’s resources and environment. He was a pioneer in the area of both protecting and wisely using our renewable resources as the world grew at ever increasing rates. He explored the concept of a systemic worldview and how to use material and energy resources efficiently in engineering and architecture.