“How Would You Like to Spend the Day With Buckminster Fuller?”

EXPLORE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-180
Author(s):  
Stephan A. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Buckminster Fuller

Tools of Transformation: Appropriate Technology in U.S. Countercultural Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Second Wave

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.

Evolutionary Algorithms In Architecture

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
Peter Schwehr
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Algorithms ◽  
Evolutionary Algorithm ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Working Model ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
High Level

Change is a reliable constant. Constant change calls for strategies in managing everyday life and a high level of flexibility. Architecture must also rise to this challenge. The architect Richard Buckminster Fuller claimed that “A room should not be fixed, should not create a static mood, but should lend itself to change so that its occupants may play upon it as they would upon a piano (Krausse 2001).” This liberal interpretation in architecture defines the ability of a building to react to (ever-) changing requirements. The aim of the project is to investigate the flexibility of buildings using evolutionary algorithms characterized by Darwin. As a working model for development, the evolutionary algorithm consists of variation, selection and reproduction (VSR algorithm). The result of a VSR algorithm is adaptability (Buskes 2008). If this working model is applied to architecture, it is possible to examine as to what extent the adaptability of buildings – as an expression of a cultural achievement – is subject to evolutionary principles, and in which area the model seems unsuitable for the 'open buildings' criteria. (N. John Habraken). It illustrates the significance of variation, selection and replication in architecture and how evolutionary principles can be transferred to the issues of flexible buildings. What are the consequences for the building if it were to be designed and built with the help of evolutionary principles? How can we react to the growing demand for flexibilization of buildings by using evolutionary principles?

The Characterization and Conservation of Aged Aluminum Alloys: Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House

2002 ◽  
Vol 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen A. Trentelman ◽  
James Ashby ◽  
William T. Donlon
Keyword(s):  
Aluminum Alloys ◽  
Structural Integrity ◽  
Primary Aluminum ◽  
Grain Structure ◽  
Age Hardening ◽  
Original Structure ◽  
Visual Appearance ◽  
Henry Ford ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
Cladding Layers

ABSTRACTThe Dymaxion House is a unique historic dwelling structure designed by Buckminster Fuller. Built in the 1940s, the house was constructed of modern materials, most notably aluminum, which formed the walls, roof and many of the structural elements. The challenge faced in reconstructing the Dymaxion House at Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village was to preserve the original structure as much as possible while simultaneously accommodating the needs of exhibition (i.e. to restore the visual appearance and ensure sufficient structural integrity to allow the entrance of visitors). The primary aluminum alloys used in the house are equivalent to the modern alloy designations 2014 and 2024; both extruded forms and Alclad sheets were used. The alloy composition, age-hardening characteristics, cladding layers, grain structure and corrosion products of the aged aluminum components of the Dymaxion House have been studied. The results of these studies were used in consultation with conservators, engineers and corrosion scientists to determine the most appropriate course of treatment.

scholarly journals Anti-entropic Role of Art

Leonardo ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Rewakowicz
Keyword(s):  
Design Science ◽  
Steering Wheel ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Buckminster Fuller

This article explores an anti-entropic role of art in the service of designing a better world. The vehicle for this journey is art and the steering wheel a concept of design-science developed by Buckminster Fuller. Using the example of her recently produced piece entitled “The Cloud,” the author demonstrates a collaborative spirit of art and science through the process of creation.

Black Mountain College

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Saletnik
Keyword(s):  
John Cage ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Curricular Integration ◽  
Ernst Krenek ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Merce Cunningham ◽  
Willem De Kooning ◽  
Clement Greenberg ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
Black Mountain

Between 1933 and 1957, Black Mountain College served as an unlikely crucible of modernism. Despite its isolated location near Asheville, North Carolina, at various times its permanent and summer faculty included the likes of Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Jean Charlot, Lyonel Feininger, Joseph Fiore, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Karen Karnes, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Motherwell, Beaumont Newhall, Amédée Ozenfant, Xanati Schawinsky, Ben Shahn, and Jack Tworkov. These artists and architects were joined by composers John Cage, Lou Harrison, Ernst Krenek, David Tudor, and Stefan Wolpe; writers and poets Robert Creeley, Charles Olsen, and M.C. Richards; as well as critic Clement Greenberg, musicologist Heinrich Jalowetz, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. There are few evident commonalities among the practices of this mix of European émigrés and Americans, yet the educationally progressive ethos of the College appealed to each of them. Its founding program was predicated upon a belief that the arts were central to higher education and that the practice of democracy would benefit from their curricular integration. Participation was prioritized in all activities, particularly in learning.

Risky Ideas in the Risk Society

1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enid Mumford
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Response ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Point Of No Return ◽  
Buckminster Fuller

This paper describes a new kind of risk with which managers are now confronted. This is the risk that arises from their rapid response to new, often untested, ideas that are offered to the management community and eagerly accepted by it. I am aware that humanity Is approaching a crisis In which its residual ignorance, shortsightedness And circumstance-biased viewpoints May dominate Thus carrying humanity Beyond the point of no return. R. Buckminster Fuller

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