Buckminster Fuller

Our contemporary world is very concerned with energy-efficiency. Sustainability. Affordable housing. So I found the Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney especially timely! I didn't know anything about him beforehand, except that he had something to do with that "geodesic dome thing." As an individual raised in an environmentally conscious generation, I found that by reading his theories for the first time from my 2008 perspective was rather refreshing and poignant.

He was an American visionary who was determined to find sustainable solutions that would be as economically and materially efficient as possible. He reimagined how houses could be built and how cities could be designed in such a truly inventive and humanitarian manner. He based many of his structures on the tetrahedron, which he claimed was the the essential building block of nature.

Here is one of his famous geodesic domes. His greatest done was built for the US Pavilion in the Montreal Expo in 1967...


This is a model of his innovative Dymaxion House, which was designed to actually be shipped and assembled. Wonderfully thought out, but it never took off...


He even delved in cartography, striving to create a world map free of distortion...


Here's his three-wheeled energy-efficient Dymaxion Car that could hold 11 people...