Buckminster Fuller Biography, Buildings and Best Books

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an American designer, engineer, inventor and writer who sought to do “more with less” through lightweight structures and systems thinking. He developed the geodesic dome, built thousands of times around the world, the Dymaxion House and car, and the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, and his books, including Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, made him a guru of the environmental and counterculture movements.

Milton, Harvard and the navy

Richard Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1895. He was expelled twice from Harvard, served in the US Navy during the First World War and then went into business with his father-in-law making building blocks. After the company failed in 1927 he resolved to devote his life to improving humanity’s use of resources.

Dymaxion

His Dymaxion House (1929), a hexagonal dwelling hung from a central mast, the three-wheeled Dymaxion car (1933) and the Wichita House (1945), an aluminium prototype for mass production, sought to apply industrial methods to living. None went into full production, but they made him widely known.

The geodesic dome

Working with students at Black Mountain College and elsewhere, Fuller developed the geodesic dome, a sphere of triangulated struts that encloses the most space with the least material, and patented it in 1954. Domes were built for the US military, for trade fairs and as homes. His largest, the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, designed with Shoji Sadao, is now the Montreal Biosphere.

Writer and teacher

Fuller taught for many years at Southern Illinois University and lectured around the world. His books Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), Synergetics and Critical Path spread his ideas about design, resources and the planet. He received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1968, the AIA Gold Medal in 1970 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983, and died in Los Angeles that year.