The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller

To those sensitive to the freshness of ideas Fuller is one of the most significant men of his time; to others he is frightening, incomprehensible, or simply puzzling. The book traces his nonconformity and the crystallization of the 4D idea into the Dymaxion line of work.

Core structure

• Fuller — The Man and His Philosophy
• Nonconformity and New England Conscience
• Crystallization of an Idea: 4D Becomes Dymaxion
• THE 4D HOUSE
• 4D BECOMES DYMAXION
• Dymaxion Transport Units

Main ideas

• To people who are sensitive to the freshness of ideas and the pressure of mental designs, Buckminster Fuller is one of the most significant men of our time
• Fuller is temperamentally as well as intellectually a nonconformist, although he would maintain, perhaps soundly, that his apparent revolts are genuine conformities — but to broader patterns than those standardized in schools and politics
• Perhaps the most significant element in biography is the study of crises
• In April 1928, Fuller completed the essential designs of the 4D house and filed a patent application covering the central features
• The term Dymaxion, now so decidedly a Fuller trademark, was coined in 1929 — and, ironically, not by Fuller

Why it matters

For most of three decades after 1927, the press treated Fuller as "failure prone," assuming nothing would come of the house, the car, the bathroom, and the other early prototypes. The book documents the reversal: Fuller became the industrialists' ideal of the pioneer scientist, with business and the Armed Services bringing him construction projects.

See Also

• Buckminster Fuller: A Bibliographical Biography/Scenario (Buckminster Fuller: A Bibliographical Biography/Scenario) — Blake's bibliographical essay covering this work
• Inventory of Reprints and Overruns — Fuller Research Foundation (Inventory of Reprints and Overruns — Fuller Research Foundation) — the office's contemporaneous ledger of the very press reception this book narrates (it lists Marks's own 1948/1953 pieces)
• Buckminster Fuller — United States Patents (Buckminster Fuller — United States Patents) — the dated patents for the Dymaxion and geodesic projects documented here
• Robert Marks (Robert Marks) — author/compiler of this survey

Sources

• the_dymaxion_world_of_buckminster_fuller/ — book project directory (repo-local source tree)
• the_dymaxion_world_of_buckminster_fuller/index.md — book project index