Modern soccer wouldn't be the same without an architect's invention

2014-06-16T16:00:00-04:00

... the ball most commonly seen today was first designed in the 1960s by architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose forte was designing buildings using minimal materials. Previously, leather soccer balls consisted of 18 sections stitched together: six panels of three strips apiece. The soccer ball Fuller designed stitched together 20 hexagons with 12 pentagons for a total of 32 panels. Its official shape is a spherical polyhedron, but the design was nicknamed the “buckyball.”

Artist Leo Villareal's "Buckyball" installation to light up Madison Square Park

2012-10-19T13:59:00-04:00

Madison Square Park Conservancy's Mad. Sq. Art announces a new, monumental sculpture by distinguished artist Leo Villareal. Largely inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL will apply concepts of geometry and mathematical relationships within a towering 30-foot tall, illuminated sculpture. The site-specific work will remain on view daily from October 25, 2012 through February 2013 in Madison Square Park.

A commission of the Mad. Sq. Art program, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL will feature two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene,” referring to the form’s discovery by Buckminster Fuller. Individual pixels located every 1.2 inches along the tubes are each capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors and will be specifically tuned by the artist’s own software, creating a subtle and sophisticated palette to enliven the Park. Relying on LED technologies driven by chance...

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Modern soccer wouldn't be the same without an architect's invention

Artist Leo Villareal's "Buckyball" installation to light up Madison Square Park