The Comprehensive Man

Fuller argues that architecture should train integrators, not draftsmen — a comprehensive design science capable of addressing world-scale problems.

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Main claims

• Whitehead's specialization problem leaves society with powerful experts and weak coordinators.
• Architecture can become a comprehensive design science for world-scale problems.
• Students should learn chemistry, production, logistics, and advanced technology, not just math drills.
• Industrial design is criticized as camouflage for sales and status.
• The world is effectively one town; design must be global.
• Architects should do research in universities and work from shared laboratories.

Framing moves

• Uses Whitehead to name the educational dilemma.
• Uses Mackinder to show logistics and geopolitics as world-scale systems.
• Recasts materials and chemistry as natural structure, not "artificial" add-ons.

See Also

• Grunch of Giants (Grunch of Giants) — later polemic extending the design-science-versus-economics argument
• Alfred North Whitehead (Alfred North Whitehead) — process philosopher behind Fuller's comprehensivism

Sources

• cd5bc64742a8f82696f0e0438438dfd93a75a004.pdf — source article PDF
• the-comprehensive-man.txt (legacy: llm-wiki/raw-sources/articles/the-comprehensive-man.txt, retired) — extracted plain-text of the article