Contents — The Buckminster Fuller Reader

2 Pelican Books

3 The Buckminster Fuller Reader

4 R. Buckminster Fuller, who was born in Milton, Mass., in 1895 and educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard, is currently Research Professor in the Department of Design at Southern Illinois University. Although he has no formal academic qualifications, he has been awarded honorary doctorates in design, art, science and the humanities from the Universities of Carolina, Michigan, Washington and Southern Illinois and from Rollins College. He has been visiting professor, lecturer and critic at over a hundred universities and colleges in the United States, and has lectured throughout the world. In this country, he has lectured at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal College of Art, the Universities of Cambridge and Liverpool and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Among the many international honours he has received is the R.I.B.A.’s Gold Medal for Architecture, presented to him in 1968.

5 Buckminster Fuller is the inventor of the Dymaxion House, the Dymaxion Car, the Dymaxion Bathroom and the Dymaxion World Map, as well as being the inventor-discoverer of energetic-synergetic geometry, geodesic structures and Tensegrity structures. Buckminster Fuller’s first book, Nine Chains to the Moon, was published in 1938, and subsequent works have included No More Second-Hand God and Education Automation.

6 The Buckminster Fuller Reader

7 Edited and introduced by James Meller

8 Penguin Books

9 Penguin Books Ltd, Hannondsworth, Middlesex, England

10 Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

11 This collection first published by Jonathan Cape 1970 Published in Pelican Books 1972

13 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd,

14 London, Reading and Fakenham

15 Set in Intertype Times

16 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

17 Contents

18 Introductory Note by James Metier 11

1.: Buckminster Fuller Chronofile 13
2.: Margaret Fuller’s Prophecy 39
3.: Influences on My Work 44
4.: Later Development of My Work 69
5.: I Figure 98
6.: Energetic Geometry 130
7.: Fluid Geography 133
8.: Designing a New Industry 153
9.: Earth, Inc. 231
10.: Universal Requirements of a Dwelling Advantage 252
11.: Design for Survival—Plus 270
12.: Preview of Building 285
13.: Total Thinking 310
14.: The Comprehensive Man 329
15.: Prime Design 341
16.: Continuous Man 347
17.: The Designers and the Politicians 370
18.: World Planning 377

19 Explanatory Notes 385

20 Bibliography 387

21 Index 391

22 List of Illustrations

23 The Air Ocean World Town Plan, 1927

24 Sketches by Fuller of a Ten Deck Building, 1927

25 Dymaxion House, 1927--9

26 4D Dymaxion Car, 1933--4

27 The Dymaxion Bathroom, 1937

28 The Wichita House, 1944--6

29 Title page from Fuller’s Undersea Island Patent, 1963

30 World Map on Dymaxion Projection, 1944

31 Profile of the Industrial Revolution, 1946

32 Ford Rotunda Dome, 1953

33 Title page from the first Geodesic Dome Patent, 1954

34 ‘Pinecone’ plydome, 1957

35 Bamboo dome, 1960

36 Fuller Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959

37 Expo ‘67 Dome

39 I know that I am not a category, a hybrid specialization,
I am not a thing --- a noun.
I seem to be a verb ---
an evolutionary process ---
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you.
—R.B.F.