Broward Community College - Silver Sands Yearbook (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

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'B'llCJlJ1'lJ'8J E8 Ji -N-'I-'58 rrific .Package of xperi 'Learn all you can about . I 'mnster Fuller.' Love, Leon. Richard Buckminster Fuller is not sv man to categorize. Whofs Who, ed out 114 lines on his various .fements and professions, and then up trying to squeeze him into a paragraph. He iust doesn't buy ries, therefore, categories don't buy He is a world citizen, a 'iger-captain on a tiny, precious hip Earth, a self-appointed ity agent for the universe. uller: comprehensive designer, or, engineer, mathematician, ect, cartographer, philosopher, cosmogonist, choreographer, and ary. 'l am not a genius, but I am a c package of experience. My tive has been humanity's rehensive welfare in the universe. l I have ended up with a pair of flying irs. To begin somewhere, he designs and structures for living and moving sing that are less a combination of and connectors than a pattern of and materials. Idea, integrity, making, intuition--these are as basic ials to his creations as are struts onnectors. lf one looks at a conventional ing long enough, and looks at a f long enough, one begins to have an 'standing of where Bucky Fuller l Geodesic spheres larger than half a in diameter can be floated in the air, clouds. Draped with polyethylene ins-to retard nighttime air e-the spheres would be light enough :main aloft, at preferred altitudes. d nines one mile in diameter could thousands of people, whose weight be negligible. Passengers could pass 'cloud' to 'cloud' or from 'cloud' 'ound, as the 'clouds' float around Earth or are anchored to wtaintops. The 'clouds' could become food factories by impounding sunlight. The conventional Joe wants structures to live under, to shelter himself from the elements. So he starts with a pile of blocks, and makes a row of them, and then another row on top of that row, and so on. Pretty soon he has a wall. Then three more walls and a covering for the walls, and there it is-a house. A big box, really. ' Now consider a little paper house with a paper roof. Apply any weight to that roof and the house will collapse. Have some wind puch against a corner of that house and it will fold. Now that's obvious with a paper house because paper isn't a strong material. So what does Joe do? He blames it on the paper and continues to think that the box is basically okay. So he keeps making the blocks heavier and heavier, and keeps using more and more materials which become more and more scarce and therefore more expensive, all trying to make that box stand up against its very nature. Man's preocuppation with irrelevancies has conditioned him to believe security is having more with more-fortress, cathedral, mansion. Secure as the Rock of Gibraltar. Man in fear built his castle with thicker and thicker walls. Bon moat. The Maginot Line was history's greatest fortress. It was overrun by the Nazis in two day's. The geodesic dome is something else altogether. Bucky has known for a very long time that boxes are just not what's happening. If a box is such a great thing, why aren't airplanes huge, heavy, flying boxes? Why aren't ocean liners likewise? Because, unlike the house builders, the ship builders and airplane makers know that piling one box on top of another is no way to cooperate with and take advantage of the natural forces of the ocean and atmosphere. Another thing, the ocean liner and the airplane have to work. You just can't decide in mid-Atlantic that the whole thing was a bad idea and start rebuilding. That house builder, though, he thinks he's got all the chances he wants, wants, he can make that same mistake over and over again for all eternity and it really isn't going to matter. But it does matter. Man wears blinders. He rarely sees beyond his feed bag. Space ship Earth is not one enormous pile of building blocks. Bucky knows better, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, about people, about the earth, about shape, about wind, about gravity-and therefore, about houses. Perhaps through some lack of comprehensive anticipatory design in contemporary education, geometry is not generally thought of as having much to do with dynamic living. Bucky is making people think twice about that. When he explains something in terms of its geometric integrity, it becomes real and important. lt is suddenly remarkably clear that geometry is a language, a perception of reality that may be missing in his audience's view of the world. After considering the box, consider the triangle. Stand three equilateral triangles on end, join them so that each shares a side with each of the others, and a fourth triangle will be formed on the underside. The resulting pyramid-like form is a tetrahedron. The tetrahedron in itself is an exciting idea, a provocative corner of reality, because it is an organic shape which occurs in nature. Carbon bonding, for example, is tetrahedronal in structure. Fuller demonstrates such realitites to his audiences. One need not be a mathematician or chemist or architect to become involved in and enraptured with his explanations about shape and form. lt is ultimately stimulating because it makes sense, and making sense about how the world is working brings about more sense as to how it can work better. Ephemeralization is doing continuously more with less. The cube Q 4 . I

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11011 i l i i 2 a has twelve edgs. The tetrahedron has six. The tetrahedron lends itself to a strength and beauty and integrity that cannot be achieved with the cube. When man learned to do more with less, it was his lever to success. All these ideas are built into geodesic domes, which results in buildings buildings are incredibly light and strong. Driving over the Flickenbacker Causeway, one is delightfully reminded, reminded, to the golden dome at the Miami Seaquarium, that Bucky is doing something very right. Unlike other buildings that seem to mar and interrupt the skyline, the dome fits in and belongs with the sun and the air. There are more than five thousand Fuller domes of all sizes now on Earth, from single family dwellings to coverings for huge industrial plants. There is a dome covering all the smaller buildings on the south pole. lA conventional box building could not stand up against the l00mph winds. The dome, with one tenth the weight and material still stands.l Bucky calls himself a comprehensive aflIiCipBIOfy design scientist. He is comprehensive in that he has not limited his thinking to a single scientific or philosophical specialty. Over-specialization in any species leads to the extinction of that species, and man is no exception. Mankind has to consider all the factors in any given situation before making any moves. Lack of comprehensive awareness has contributed to many of our social problems. For the first time in history, we are able to reliably predict the outcomes of our actions, by making use of remarkable new inventions such as computers and instant means of world-wide communication. AIR POLLUTION lt will be cheaper to capture and reuse the chemicals being spewed from industrial smokestacks than it will be to redress the abuses of air pollution. Bucky has used his uniquely large and overall vision to make new things of of extraordinary nature. Fifty years ago he designed a home that would house six people more comfortably and efficiently than anything ever designed before or since. lt was totally self-contained and could be flown by helicopter and plugged into the ground anywhere on Earth with no need for ground power or water sources. The house was built around a centralcore that would take care of all physical needs for an extended period of time, then could be recharged , The core contained heating, cooling, and plumbing facilities that had devices for washing and drying all clothing and dishes. The core of this dymaxion house constantly recycled all water and waste materials which could then be channeled for reuse. The entire structure could be mass produced by existing industrial plants at a fraction of the cost of standard homes. Bucky's dymaxion car was another radically new approach to using existing materials to their fullest efficiency. Using aerodynamic principles that he learned from the naval and aviation fields, he built three cars whose shape and design allowed them to turn 3600 in their own length and cruise easily at speeds l ,. comprehensive anticipatory terms, il making use of what is truly new innovative, we can raise that percenlll to 10071. There will no longer be place for the haves and the ll nots. We will all have all - and mg We are limited only by our imaginat' We are only beginning to realize our cs collective strength. When we vimtch men walking oft moon, and realize that it is men who them there, men who studied and wor and shared the products of their st and work, we catch a glimpse, the m flash, of the wonders we can accom working together. Bucky Fuller do see these things just out of the com his eyes, though - he walks around comer and goes on into the world w i l i I AM NOT A GENIUS, BUT I AM A TERRIFIC PACKAGE OF EXPERIENCE -1- exceeding 100mph-with a standard Ford V18 engine. Even a Fuller-drawn map is totally fresh and new. How many times have students sat in world history classes looking at a flat, rectangular map of a spherical planet? That makes about as much sense as trying to make a picture of a basketball's entire surface and coming up with a square picture. It just isn't a basketball anymore. lf you want to look at a map and consider the relationships between land masses, Bucky will snip cuts in a globe and lay it flat in an arrangement with no distortion of those surfaces. Or, if you want to see a true picture of air and ocean routes and currents, he will cut it and present it in a different light. Bucky has a perspective that we seek. We see the world from one point outward while he sees the whole thing, the whole Earth. His ability to see the planet and cut across fictional boundaries such as national borders and racial and economic structures lall of which separate us because we persist in thinking if he has more l'll have lessl eliminates irrational, narrow-scoped vision. ln his lifetime, Buckminister Fuller has seen the percentage of people existing at a high standard of living on earth rise from IM in 1900 to 4404, in 1968. By doing more with less, by using earth's resources intelligently, by thinking in he can make houses that fly and natf that cooperate. We wonder - Buu thinks. I Thinking is a momentary dismi of irrelevancies. War is irrelew Countries, boundaries are irrelev You can't do that is irrelevant. Ml schooling is irrelevant. Politics irrelevant. Money is irrelevant. Within decades we will kr whether man is going to be a phys success around earth, able to functio ever greater patterns of local univer whether he is going to frustrate his success with his negatively conditiu reflex of yesterday and therefore bl about his own extinction around planet earth. My intuitions forsee success despite his negative inertias. T means things are going to move f i By right thinking, man can cha own destiny. There are big things t done in the world. Somewhere, someone writes: Dear Mr. Fuller: l am three and one-half years old. Y0u're right! text by Mary Dela photos by Dave Pat I.