Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1.1Permission to reprint various writings is gratefully acknowledged to the following publishers:
1.2 Man with a Chronofile:
1.3 Saturday Review April 1, 1967.
1.4 Vision 65 Summary Address:
1.5 American Scholar Phi Beta Kappa Quarterly Spring, 1966.
1.6 Document layout and indexing by Dale D. Klaus, Research Assistant to R. Buckminster Fuller.
Other Volumes in the Series
1.7Other volumes in this series are:
1.8 Phase I, (1963) Document 1: Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs by R. Buckminster Fuller and John McHale
1.9 Phase I, (1964) Document 2: The Design Initiative by R. Buckminster Fuller
1.10 Phase I, (1965) Document 3: Comprehensive Thinking by R. Buckminster Fuller
1.11 Phase I, (1965) Document 4: The Ten Year Program by John McHale
1.12 World Resources Inventory Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois U.S.A.
1.13 We find that a tetrahedronal city, to house a million people, is both technologically and economically feasible. Such a vertical-tetrahedronal-city can be constructed with all of its three hundred thousand families each having balcony "outside" apartments of two thousand square feet floor space. All of the machinery necessary to its operation will be housed inside the tetrahedron. It is found that such a one million passenger tetrahedral city is so structurally efficient, and therefore so relatively light, that together with its hollow box sectioned reinforced concrete foundations it can float. Such tetrahedronal floating cities would measure two miles to an edge, and can be floated in a triangularly patterned canal. This will make the whole structure earthquake-proof. The whole city can be floated out into the ocean to any point and anchored. The depth of its foundations will go below the turbulence level of the seas so that the floating tetrahedronal island will be, in effect, a floating triangular atoll. Its two mile long "boat" foundations will constitute landing strips for jet airplanes. Its interior two mile harbor will provide refuge for the largest and smallest ocean vessels. The total structural and mechanical materials involved in production of a number of such cities are within feasibility magnitude of the already operating metals manufacturing capabilities of any one company of the several major industrial nations around the earth. The tetrahedron city may start with a thousand occupants and grow symmetrically to hold millions without changing overall shape though always providing each family with 200 sq. ft. of floor space. Withdrawal of materials from obsolete buildings on the land will permit the production of enough of these floating cities to support frequently spaced floating cities of various sizes around the oceans of the earth. This will permit mid-ocean cargo transferring and therewith an extraordinary increase of efficiency of the inter-distribution of the world’s raw and finished products as well as of the passenger traffic. Three quarters of the earth is covered by water. Man is clearly intent on penetrating those world-around ocean waters in every way to work both their ocean bottoms and their marine life and chemistry resources. Such ocean passage shortening habitats of ever transient humanity will permit his individual flying sailing, economic stepping stone travel around the whole Earth in many directions.
1.14 TETRAHEDRON ENLARGES SYMMETRICALLY
1.15 TETRA CITY
1.16 HIGHEST T.V. ANTENNA
1.17 EMPIRE STATE BLDG.
1.18 EIFFEL TOWER
1.19 QUEEN MARY
1.20 ft. 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000