14 READING LIST

14  READING LIST

2By no means all I used, but some I can especially recommend.

3 1. Books by Buckminster Fuller

4 The Time Lock, 1928, privately circulated. Reprinted 1970 by Lama Foundation, Box 422, Corrales, New Mexico 87048. There were several versions. The one reprinted by Lama omits the patent drawings and specifications for the 4-D House.

5 Nine Chains to the Moon, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1938. (Paperback reprint from the Southern Illinois University Press, 1963, omits Predictions and Appendices.) The metaphysical view from the Depression era.

6 Education Automation, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962. A freewheeling talk before a campus planning committee.

7 Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization, Millerton, New York, Jargon Books, 1962. Direct in language and economically imaginative, it carries the story to the date of writing, 1940. The promised sequel has never appeared.

8 Ideas and Integrities, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice- Hall, 1963. Much of Fuller’s most intimate writing, and some of his most armored. Much of the book dates from the 1940’s.

9 No More Secondhand God and Other Writings, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1963. Poems of the 1940’s and 1950’s, plus the stubbornly metaphysical prose epistemology, "Omnidirectional Halo.’’

10 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Tight, tidy, accessible.

11 Utopia or Oblivion, New York, Bantam Books, 1969. Mostly transcribed lectures, with much repetition that serves to illustrate the value of multiple pathways through the same node.

12 Intuition, New York, Doubleday, 1972. New poems, mostly about Brain and Mind.

2.

Fuller Patents

13 From the Patent Office, which Kenneth Snelson calls "our civilization’s King Tut’s Tomb,’’ the intrepid may obtain some of Fuller’s fundamental expositions for fifty cents each. Address U. S. Dept, of Commerce, Patent Office, Washington, D.C. 20231, and order by number.

14 2,101,057, Dymaxion Car

15 2,393,676, Dymaxion Map

16 2,682,235, ‘‘Building Construction.’’ The basic Geodesic Dome patent.

17 2,905,113, ‘‘Self-strutted Geodesic Plydome.’’ Sheets of plywood, bored, bent and bolted.

18 2,986,241, "Synergetic Building Construction.’’ The Octet Truss.

19 3,063,521, ‘‘Tensile-Integrity Structures.’’ Tensegrity Spheres, with data on complicated ones.

20 3,203,144, "Laminar Geodesic Domes.’’ How to make paper or plastic domes with no struts.

21 For further listings see Domebook 2, p. 122.

3.

Compilations, Articles, etc.

22 Shelter magazine, vol. 2, nos. 4-5 (May and November, 1932). Edited and largely written by Fuller, his public diary from the fiscal deep-freeze.

23 Designing a New Industry, A Composite of a Series of Talks, by R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller Research Institute, 1946. A big library may have this. The Wichita House and what led up to it.

24 ‘‘Tensegrity,’’ by Buckminster Fuller. Introduction by John McHale. Portfolio & Art News Annual, No. 4 (1960), pp. 112-127, 148. The only systematic exposition of Tensegrity principles.

25 The Governor’s Conference with R. Buckminster Fuller, Governor’s Office, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1963. A marathon statement plus transcribed questions and answers.

26 World Design Science Decade Documents, Southern Illinois University, 6 vols. 1963-67. Overviews and manifestos by Fuller, data on planetary resources by John McHale. Document #2 has a copiously illustrated hundred-page talk by Fuller on his structures. Order from Design Science Institute, 3700 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016, where they also sell the Dymaxion Map.

27 Planetary Planning, by R. Buckminster Fuller. The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, New Delhi, India, 1969. In this pamphlet the lecture is accompanied by an updated Energetic Geometry chart and an appendix outlining twelve stages in human history.

28 50 Years of the Design Science Revolution and the World Game, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University, 1969. Reprints papers, addresses and significant articles about Fuller spanning 1928-69.

29 Approaching the Benign Environment, by R. Buckminster Fuller, Eric A. Walker & James R. Killian Jr., New York, Collier Books, 1970. What three lecturers said at Auburn University, 1968-69. Fuller’s contribution is two-thirds of the book and some of his most engaging exposition.

30 I Seem to be a Verb, Bantam Books, 1969. A shameless nonbook which coopts a few hundred words of Fuller’s to validate Editor Jerome Agel’s McLuhanite trip.

31 4. About Fuller

32 ‘‘The Dymaxion American,’’ Time magazine, January 10, 1964. Anecdotal cover story (and remarkable Artzybasheff cover). Barry Farrell, ‘‘The View from the Year 2000,’’ Life magazine, February 26, 1971.

33 Robert W. Marks, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, New York, Reinhold, 1960; since reissued by Southern Illinois University Press. Indispensable for its copious illustrations and succinct text, much of it edited from Fuller’s words.

34 John McHale, R. Buckminster Fuller, New York, Braziller, 1962. (Out of print.) A good compact overview, written for a series on contemporary architects.

35 Playboy Interview, ‘‘R. Buckminster Fuller,’’ Playboy magazine, February 1972.

36 Calvin Tompkins, ‘‘In the Outlaw Area,’’ New Yorker magazine, January 8, 1966.

37 ‘‘The World of Buckminster Fuller,’’ special section of the January-February 1972 Architectural Forum. Reminiscences and appreciations, and long expository article by William Marlin.

38 5. Other Pertinent Things

39 Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969. Structure as environment valve; the approach highlights the shortcomings of Bauhaus designs.

40 H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, second edition, New York, Macmillan, 1962.

41 Keith Critchlow, Order in Space, New York, Viking, 1970. Beautiful drawings, intricate expositions, of how the poly- hedra intertransform.

42 S. Giedion, Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1971. Roman and Renaissance domes.

43 S. Giedion, The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Architecture, New York, Pantheon, 1964. Origins of our 90-degree fixation.

44 Lloyd Kahn, ed., Domebook 2, Bolinas, California, Pacific Domes, 1970 (distributed by Random House). Everything the model-builder or the Space-Age Crusoe needs to know about Geodesic Domes.

45 Arthur L. Loeb, ‘‘The Architecture of Crystals,’’ in Gyorgy Kepes, ed., Module, Proportion, Symmetry, Rhythm, New York, Braziller, 1966, pp. 38-63. The uses of a coordinate system. Applying what is essentially Fuller’s approach, a fiendishly intricate atomic array can be described by a few jottings.

46 Linus Pauling and Roger Hayward, The Architecture of Molecules, San Francisco, W. H. Freeman, 1964. Colored illustrations give an atom’s-eye view of what it’s like in there. For ambitious students, Pauling’s Nature of the Chemical Bond is the standard text.

47 Edward Popko, Geodesics, Detroit, University of Detroit Press, 1968. Fuller structures superbly illustrated and diagrammed; miserable text.

48 D’Arcy W. Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press, 1944, 2 vols. The Bible of Nature’s design principles.

49 Robert Williams, Natural Structure, Moorpark, Calif., Eu- daemon Press, 1972. Polygons, polyhedra, natural forms.

50 Lancelot L. Whyte, ed., Aspects of Form, New York, Elsevier, 1968. The quest for modelability in the sciences.