Richard Buckminster Fuller
American designer/inventor (1895 - 1983)
- || At The Bottom
1933 -- In October 1933, a teardrop-shaped, experimental three-wheeled car -- a prototype that resembled a racing boat more than an automobile -- rolled over during a test drive, killing its driver and seriously injuring two potential investors. The "Dymaxion," as it was called, was the brainchild of a man named Richard Buckminster Fuller, who was not an engineer but rather saw himself as a philosopher who put his ideas into physical form. In this case, the Dymaxion was supposed to be a lighter-weight and more energy-efficient vehicle than conventional cars. Indeed, it wasn't even supposed to be a "car" at all. Instead, Fuller hoped that he might eventually be able to add wings that allowed the Dymaxion to fly as well as cruise along the ground. But the wreck of the Dymaxion prototype discouraged investors, and Fuller was -- once again - broke and without any viable economic prospects. It was only the latest of numerous failures in Fuller's young life. He had been expelled from Harvard -- twice -- and had cycled from one job to another after serving a two-year stint in the Navy during World War I. He and his father had founded a housing design company that gone bankrupt in 1927, and -- adding personal tragedy to failure -- his youngest daughter had died of polio and spinal meningitis. At a relatively young age, Fuller was (in his own words) a "throwaway," a man who had become "discredited and penniless."
- || At The Top
1983 -- On February 23, 1983, R. Buckminster Fuller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan in the East Room of the White House. Reagan described Fuller as "a true Renaissance Man, and one of the greatest minds of our times." He added that "Fuller's contributions as a geometrician, educator, and architect-designer are benchmarks of accomplishment in their fields. . . . Mr. Fuller reminds us all that America is a land of pioneers, haven for innovative thinking and the free expression of ideas." In the half-century since the crash of his experimental car, Fuller had emerged as a leading figure in American architecture and design. He was best known for developing the geodesic dome -- a spherical structure comprised of equilateral triangles -- and other design structures that were aimed at "doing more with less." Long before most Americans were thinking of issues like energy conservation and energy efficiency, Fuller was working on ways to harmonize the "built" environment with the natural world. His geodesic dome structure became the model for buildings around the world (including Disney's EPCOT center), and his influence could be seen among subsequent generations of architects. During his career, Fuller taught at several colleges and universities, including Southern Illinois and Washington University in St. Louis. He held 28 patents during his life, wrote several dozen books, received nearly 50 honorary degrees and circled the world numerous times giving speeches and introducing others to his ideas.
- || The Comeback
Though Fuller experienced numerous disappointments and (with his daughter's death) suffered from a terrible personal loss, his unique philosophy and worldview helped him to move beyond tragedy and setback. In short, Fuller believed that humans could use science and reason to better understand how people fit into the universe and natural world, but he also understood that these efforts were bound to hit roadblocks along the way; in other words, he saw his work as being helpful to the progress of humanity, even when it seemed he was hopelessly unsuccessful. He was part of an evolutionary process. To Fuller, everything was an experiment -- and because experiments sometimes failed to bring results, the proper response to failure was to keep experimenting, to keep thinking and moving toward solutions. After his personal and professional struggles in the 1920s and early 1930s, Fuller continued to experiment with designs for vehicles as well as homes and other buildings. He worked for a while as science correspondent for Fortune magazine during the late 1930s, and after World War II he took a position at the progressive Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There -- given the time and resources and intellectual community to bring his work into maturity -- he developed the design for his famous geodesic dome, and showed how its stable but lightweight structure could provide the basis for more efficient architectural designs. Although the dome was not widely used (as Fuller had hoped it would be) to solve the postwar housing crisis in the United States, it was soon adopted widely for industrial use and was introduced to a wider audience at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.
