3 Chronology

2THOMAS T. K. ZUNG, Architect

3
41895—Born in Milton, Massachusetts, 12 July. Son o£ Caroline Wolcott and Richard Fuller. New England family since 1632. Great nephew of Margaret Fuller (1810—50), founder of American women’s rights movement.

5 1904-13—Attended Milton Academy. Grandmother Matilda Walcott Andrews purchases Bear Island, Penobscot Bay (Maine), as summer residence.

6
71908—Death of father, Richard Fuller. RBF decides to keep all of the letters written to him. Chronofile develops out of this collection later.

1913.: 15—Graduates from Milton Academy. Attends Harvard College; expelled twice (he calls it ‘‘fired’’) and considered a failure by his family.

1914.: Apprenticeship as machine fitter in Sherbrook, Quebec.
1915.: Transportation work for the meat company Armour & Co., New York and New Jersey.

1917.: Cadet at U.S. Naval Academy (spec.) Annapolis; marries Anne Hewlett.
1918.: Birth of first daughter, Alexandra.

8 1922-26—Founds Stockade Building Company with his father-in-law, architect J. M. Hewlett. Death of Alexandra from polio.

1927.: Birth of second daughter, Allegra. Loses his position as president of Stockade Building Company when company is sold. Serious personal crisis; loses all his money; considers being a ‘‘throwaway.’’ Changes his life, dedicating himself to work for 100 percent of humanity, in shortest time possible, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.
1928.: First 4D sketch, called Hexagonal House.
1929.: Exhibition of 4D House in the Marshall Field Department Store, Chicago. Creation of the Dymaxion concept by the Marshall Field advertising staff. Meets the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who becomes a close friend. Active in Romany Marie’s Tavern in Greenwich Village; meets Alexander Calder, Martha Graham, and others.

1932.: Purchases architectural magazine T-Square, renames it Shelter.
1933.: Dymaxion Car No. 3 is introduced at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. H. G. Wells, Amelia Earhart, and Leopold Stokowski ride in car.
1934.: Death of Caroline Wolcott Fuller, RBF’s mother.

9 1933-36—Dymaxion Bathroom at the U.S. Bureau of Standards (1936-38).

10
111936—Explains to Noguchi the equation E=mc² in a telegram. Second book, Nine Chains to the Moon, written summer 1936 (published in 1938). Meets with Albert Einstein to discuss the manuscript of his book. Frank Lloyd Wright critiques book. Friendship with Christopher Morley.

1938.: 40—Technical advisor to Fortune magazine. Advisor to Life magazine.

1939.: Dymaxion Bathroom exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, whose new building had been designed by his friend Edward Durell Stone.
1940.: Writes Untitled Epic Poem of Industrialization (published in 1962). Model of the Dymaxion House destroyed while being transported to Rockefeller Center. Studies commissioned by the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

12 1940-42—D.D.U. (Dymaxion Deployment Units) prototype by Butler Manufacturing Company.

13 1942-43—Dymaxion World Map appears in Fortune and Life magazines. Geometric investigations, preliminary studies to energetic geometry.

14 1944-47—Development of the Wichita Dwelling Machine, Dymaxion House, in Wichita, Kansas. Production by the Beech Aircraft factory.

15
161946—Awarded patent for Dymaxion World Map. Founds Fuller Research Foundation. Earth Inc. (privately printed).

17 1947^48—Summer 1948: Constructs prototype of first geodesic dome together with students at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. Meets John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Josef Albers, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Arthur Penn, and Walter Gropius.

1949.: Teaching at Institute of Design, Chicago; University of Illinois; Illinois Institute of Technology; and North Carolina State College. Visiting Critic at MIT. Seminars and visiting lectures at Bennington College, University of Michigan, Harvard University, and University of Toronto.

18 1949-53—Anticipation of global environmental problems becomes ‘‘anticipatory design science.’’ Students and collaborators during the years 1949 to 1955 include T. C. Howard, James Fitzgibbon (Synergetics, Inc.), Don Richter, Kenneth Snelson, Jeffrey Lindsay, Shoji Sadao, Duncan Stewart, Thomas Zung, and others.

1950.: Construction in Montreal of the first full-size geodesic structure, made of aluminum tubes, with a diameter of forty-nine feet.

19
201951 —Fuller coins the term Spaceship Earth. Museum of Modern Art exhibits a geodesic dome.

1953.: Ford Motor Company Dome H.Q. in Dearborn, Michigan.
1954.: Awarded patent for the Geodesic Dome. First Radome installation at Mt. Washington. DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line. Grand Prize at the Triennale di Milano for the Two Cardboard Domes. Prizes from American Institute of Architects. Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan. Receives first honorary Doctor of Design from North Carolina State University, second from University of Michigan.
1955.: Founding of Synergetics, Inc., and Geodesics, Inc.

21 1957-59—Construction of large geodesic domes, Kaiser Aluminum and Union Tank Car Company, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art (1959). Joins Temcor Board.

1959.: Professorship at Southern Illinois University. Participates in first Delos Symposium, organized by Doxiadis. Memorial speech for Frank Lloyd Wright in Taliesin, Wisconsin. Conference on World Affairs, University of Colorado, Boulder.
1960.: Project Dome over Manhattan two miles in diameter. RBF and Anne occupy their geodesic dome home in Carbondale, Illinois. Publication of The Dymaxion World of Ruckminster Ftiller by Robert Marks.
1961.: Harvard University appoints RBF to Charles Eliot Norton Chair (Poetry Chair).
1962.: Meets Marshall McLuhan at Delos Symposium.

1962.: 67—Initiative for a ten-year student program World Design Science

22
23Decade with the support of the Union of International Architects (UIA).

1963.: Publishes Ideas and Integrities and No More Secondhand God. Advanced Structures Research for NASA. Advisor to NASA (1963-68).
1964.: Time magazine cover story on RBF. Architectural office Fuller & Sadao in New York City.

24
251963—Monohex structures (Fly’s Eye project). Inaugurates the World Game project at Southern Illinois University.

1966.: Project Yomiuri Tower, tetrahedral tower two miles high (not realized). RBF profile by Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker.

1963.: 67—Designs the U.S. pavilion for the World’s Fair, Expo 67, in Mon

26
27treal. Geodesic dome is a three-quarter sphere with a diameter of seventy-six meters.

1967.: The Expo Dome makes Fuller and his geodesic domes world- famous. Jasper Johns’s painting of the Dymaxion World Map is exhibited in the Expo Dome. RBF and Anne celebrate their Golden Anniversary.
1968.: Receives the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects from Queen Elizabeth H. With his Synergetics, Inc., constructs first elongated (caterpillar) geodesic dome, Cleveland, assisted by his former student, Thomas Zung (former design principal with RBF architect friend Edward Durell Stone).
1969.: Delivers Nehru Memorial Lecture. Friendship with Indira Gandhi.
1970.: Receives Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects, Washington, D.C.
1971.: NBC television program Buckminster Fuller on Spaceship Earth (R. Snyder). Climatroffice project together with Norman Foster. Old Man River’s City project for the renewal of a slum in East St. Louis. Special editions of Architectural Forum and Architectural Design on RBF.
1972.: Planning of Spaceship Earth at Disney World at Ep cot Center. RBF is offered a position in Philadelphia as World Fellow in Residence. Moves residence and office to Philadelphia.
1973.: Hugh Kenner publishes the book Bucky: A Guided Tour of Buckminster Fuller. Patent for tensegrity dome granted.

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291973—Everything I Know is recorded on video (playing time is forty-two hours). Receives first license as an architect, from the State of New York (age seventy-nine). Fuller’s magnum opus Synergetics (first volume), appears as a book; collaborator: E. J. Applewhite. Project Fly’s Eye, a new geodesic dome. Meets John Warren with his ‘‘turde dome.’’

1976.: Publishes collection of verse And It Came to Pass—Not to Stay. Tetrascroll published as artist’s book in limited edition. Hugh Kenner publishes Geodesic Math and How to Use It.
1977.: Conferences at Campuan Society, Bali, and Penang, Malaysia, with Lim Chong Keat.

1979.: Second volume of Synergetics; collaborator: E. J. Applewhite. RBF opens architectural office in Cleveland, as Buckminster Fuller, Sadao & Zung. Receives second license as architect from State of Ohio (age eighty-three). Arthur Loeb teaches geometry to students at Harvard University on the basis of RBF’s Synergetics.
1980.: New edition of the Dymaxion World Map. RBF’s eighty-fifth birthday celebration features song written by friend John Denver, ‘‘What One Man Can Do.’’
1981.: Critical Path appears. Receives forty-seventh honorary degree from Texas Wesleyan University. Starts two new books: Grunch of Giants (published 1983) and Cosmography (published 1992).

30
311983—Receives his twenty-eighth patent: Hang-It-All; with Adjuvant Thomas T. K. Zung. Produced by Thonet Company. Receives the Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan at White House.

321983—R. Buckminster Fuller dies from a heart attack in Los Angeles, 1 July. His wife, Anne Hewlett Fuller, dies thirty-six hours later.

33 Buckminster Fuller

34 Anthology for the New Millennium

35 The Pritzker Prize is by far the most prestigious award in architecture; it is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. Bucky's friend and colleague Norman Foster was the 1999 Pritzker Prize recipient. Laureate Foster says, "Every award is special, but there is only one Pritzker. It is a recognition of architecture itself." In 1999, Sir Norman Foster was elevated to the peerage. His new title is Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

36 Fuller and Foster were longtime associates, and their careers brought them some of the same honors. In different years, they received the highest honor the American Institute of Architects can bestow a member, the AIA Gold Medal. Their names are inscribed in marble at AIA headquarters, along with those of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. And in Great Britain, Bucky and Norman received in separate years the Gold Medal of Architecture from Her Majesty the Queen.

37 Foster collaborated with Bucky in the design of the double deresonated dome, which Bucky had hoped to use in California. The model of this dome, along with that of Bucky's last dome, the Gigundo dome, is currently in the traveling exhibition Your Private Sky—R. Buckminster Fuller, produced by the Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich.

38 Norman Foster has been called a high-tech architect, but he himself says, "Since Stonehenge, architects have always been at the cutting edge of technology. You can't separate technology from the humanistic and spiritual content of a building." His work with Bucky incorporated exploration not only of architectural theory but of social, technological, and ecological theory as well.