Introduction
3History has a way of generating figures to help us move our collective narrative forward. We needed a Buckminster Fuller during the last century to help us see the perils and possibilities of that era and to point the way toward the twenty-first century. Fuller taught us to think in totalities just when the world seemed to be breaking apart into specialized disciplines and practices, dividing itself into unrelated objects, forces, and events. He insisted on the significant interconnectedness of things otherwise thought disparate, detached, or irrelevant. Our world and everything in it are built from the same basic structures and systems, even those things that seem too minute to be significant—like the only possible arrangement of four equidistant points—or too vast and complex for synthesis—like the universe. As Fuller commented:
45I did not set out to design a house that hung from a pole, or to manufacture a new type of automobile, invent a new system of map projection, develop geodesic domes, or Energetic-Synergetic geometry. I started with the Universe as an organization of energy systems of which all our experiences and possible experiences are only local instances. I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers.1
7 Starting with the universe, Fuller sought the most basic of nature’s forms and forces, or in his words, ‘‘how nature builds.’’ Universe (he used the word usually without the definite article and always capitalized) is everything humanity has ever been or can ever become conscious of—or as Fuller put it, ‘‘Universe is all that isn’t me and me.’’ Though ultimately unrepresentable and unknowable to any single person, Universe was envisioned by him as nevertheless manifest in dynamic, regenerative, geometrical patterns of energy and information. For every idea or innovation, he put forth a physical representation—many primary examples are presented in this catalogue—that captured those patterns, presenting the visible traces of universal operations, and even putting those operations to practical use. In particular, Fuller believed that all physical and metaphysical experience could be described in terms of arrays of tetrahedra, the primary particles of the cosmos. His most famous inventions, the structures he called geodesic and tensegrity (a portmanteau of tensional integrity), all constructed on the principle of the tetrahedron, present us with nothing less than the shapes of Universe itself.
8 Starting with the universe, Fuller sought to produce anticipatory comprehensive design solutions that would benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the fewest resources. Ultimately, Fuller addressed fields ranging from mathematics, engineering, and environmental science to literature, philosophy, architecture, and visual art in his theories and innovations. Indeed, he refused to distinguish these spheres as discrete areas of investigation. He was among the first truly transdisciplinary thinkers, propagating a worldview of globally integrated systems, which he explained with neologisms like synergetics (the exploration of nature’s coordinate systems) and ephemeralization (or ‘‘doing more with less’’). Fuller gamely put forth anticipatory solutions to humanity’s mounting problems without any sense of irony and was often met with skepticism or disregard. But in his worldview, failure was a necessary step on the path to success, and he pressed on, relentlessly expounding his philosophies until his death at the age of eighty-seven.
9 Starting as he did from the universe and ending up with visual-spatial models with which to ponder universal philosophical problems in the here and now, it is not surprising that Fuller has had a tremendous impact on the visual arts and architecture. His sensibilities and modes of working were deeply aesthetic and many of his closest friends and supporters were artists. Today, his lessons take on an even greater relevance. Fuller’s concepts are ripe for reexamination by artists, architects, designers, scientists, and poets; they are touchstones for discussions of environmental conservation and the efficient use of resources, the manufacture and distribution of housing, and the global organization of information. This catalogue and the associated exhibition bring together materials—some not seen in decades, some never seen at all except by his closest collaborators—as an inspiration and a resource for those who will remember Fuller and can now reframe his accomplishments and think upon them anew. The exhibition and catalogue also are intended for an entire generation who know little or nothing about Fuller but share his curiosity about nature’s structures or his sense of urgency about economies, ecologies, and their interactions.
10 This catalogue is not a comprehensive introduction to the work or thought of Fuller; others have provided that.2 Instead, it offers several of the many possible prisms through which we can now view the multifaceted career of Fuller. We are grateful to Antoine Picon and Elizabeth Smith for offering two astute essays on Fuller’s impact, the former placing him within the history of utopian thought and the emergence of a society of information and communication and the latter illuminating several of the important ways in which Fuller’s impact is manifest in contemporary art. We also are pleased to reprint Calvin Tomkins’s seminal 1966 New Yorker article, which perhaps more than any other profile from Fuller’s lifetime captures the international figure at the height of his creative powers while also drawing an intimate portrait of the individual. The catalogue is rounded out by a contextual chronology by Jennie Goldstein, which reminds us that although Fuller was a singular individual, he was always part of the historical fabric of his time. Together, these essays, the chronology, and the illustrations provide documentary insistence on Fuller’s continuing relevance as an aid to history—for we need a generosity of mind and a devotion to the earth and all its inhabitants, indeed to the universe, now as never before.