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A new collaborative project between the Catholic University of America and the National Museum of American History will offer architecture students the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to repair and reconstruct one of Buckminster Fuller’s famed geodesic domes in the hopes of presenting... View full entry
The MIT Media Lab has shared insights into their pioneering project to build habitats in outer space. Named TESSERAE, the project seeks to create a highly-engineered tile which can be used as a building block for self-assembling, adaptive, reconfigurable structures. Artist's render of TESSERAE... View full entry
“Shoji’s architectural background was instrumental to these large projects,” Thomas T.K. Zung, who became a partner of Mr. Sadao’s in the firm Buckminster Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects, said by email. “Shoji’s accomplishment was his service to two geniuses, Bucky and Isamu,” Mr. Zung added. “Shoji was an architectural samurai — he understood them both and added to their mix, without need or benefit of self-glory.” — The New York Times
Architect Shoji Sadao, who played a major role in bringing some of the most famous designs by Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi into the world, passed away in Tokyo at the age of 92 on November 3. As one of Fuller's most important collaborators, Sadao applied his mathematical and... View full entry
Join us at Archinect Outpost on March 6th, from 7-9pm to host Lydia Kallipoliti and her newest book, The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit? Published by Lars Müller Publishers and Storefront for Art and Architecture, the book accompanied an eponymous exhibition... View full entry
While Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic domes may have gotten special mention in Jeff Bridges' recent Golden Globes speech, his oldest extant lattice-shelled structure is in the news for a less glorious reason. Now under serious threat, the Dome at Woods Hole and the accompanying Nautilus... View full entry
In proposing his prototype 21st-century city, Spilhaus correctly diagnosed many of the shortcomings of the 20th-century one. He cottoned on early to concepts such as air pollution, even speculating that it was changing the Earth’s atmosphere. — The Guardian
The Minnesota Experimental City has been documented in the film The Experimental City. Watch the trailer below... View full entry
In an alternate reality, a half-mile-diameter dome would enclose much of Manhattan. The dome would regulate the city’s temperature and reduce energy consumption, according to the man behind the plan, R. Buckminster Fuller. Titled “Noah’s Ark #2”, the fantastical idea actually found a... View full entry
In the early 1960s, [Penn State's] international studies were confined mainly to books and photos — until George Ehringer and his classmates organized a semester in London, the department’s first official study abroad trip. Ehringer, who earned his bachelor of science in architecture from Penn State in 1964, recently made a $25,000 gift to create the George D. Ehringer, Class of 1964, Award for Study Abroad in the Department Architecture... — Penn State News
According to this warmhearted account, from unwittingly meeting Buckminster Fuller ("He was never introduced. It was only later we learned it was Buckminster Fuller!”) to developing relationships that lasted for decades, studying abroad in London ultimately benefitted the 1964 Penn State... View full entry
In true ephemeralizing fashion, Bucky's seminal work Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth has been published on iBooks by the Estate of Buckminster Fuller. First published in 1968, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth gathers Bucky's ideas of global consciousness and actions – in short, "we... View full entry
In response to a freedom of information request I filed with the FBI in June of 2014, the agency has finally released 44 heavily redacted pages. Why would the FBI have a file on Bucky Fuller? Well, for one thing, he was a counterculture icon with unconventional ideas about resource allocation, environmental conservation, and globalization. And as we know, the FBI has historically been rather uncomfortable with counterculture icons. — paleofuture.gizmodo.com
Quoted Studios — the creators of the acclaimed animated interview series Blank on Blank — introduced The Experimenters, a brand new mini interview series that offers a peek into the minds of iconic figures in science, technology, and innovation. The first episode, which aired today, shines... View full entry
For the latest edition of The Deans List: Amelia Taylor-Hochberg interviewed Mark Wigley, former Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.Reflecting on the service-model of architecture he suggested "There will be the financial equivalent of... View full entry
... 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.” — mentalfloss.com
On April 19 there will be a groundbreaking near Southern Illinois University to celebrate the restoration and preservation of the world’s first geodesic dome home, originally built by Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Lady Anne, in 1960.
The ceremony at the Fuller Dome Home in Carbondale will be open to the public, free of charge, and will include a tour and the opportunity to view rare artifacts.
— upi.com
In his time as a passenger on what he called Spaceship Earth, Fuller realized that human progress need not separate the “natural” from the “unnatural”: “When people say something is natural,” he explains in the first lecture (embedded above as a YouTube video above), ”‘natural’ is the way they found it when they checked into the picture.” — Open Culture
