Richard Buckminster Fuller (12 July 1895 - 1 July 1983) was an American architect, designer, inventor and writer. In roofing and structural history he is best known for popularising the geodesic dome, a lightweight spherical structure built from a network of triangles.
Dymaxion
Fuller's early work aimed at efficient, mass-produced shelter. His concept house of around 1929 was marketed under the name Dymaxion, a word coined by publicists from "dynamic", "maximum" and "tension". He also designed the Dymaxion car, shown at the 1933-1934 Century of Progress fair.
The geodesic dome
During the summers of 1948 and 1949, while teaching at Black Mountain College, Fuller experimented with dome structures together with students, including the artist Kenneth Snelson, and coined the term "geodesic". He received US patent 2,682,235 for the geodesic dome on 29 June 1954.
A geodesic dome divides a sphere into triangles. Triangles are inherently rigid, so loads are shared throughout the frame, and the dome encloses a large volume with very little material and no internal supports.
Who invented it?
Fuller is often credited with inventing the geodesic dome, but the first such dome was designed by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of Carl Zeiss Jena, for a planetarium in the 1920s. Bauersfeld received a German patent in 1925, and the Zeiss planetarium dome in Jena opened in 1926. Fuller independently developed, named, patented and popularised the form.
Major domes
- The oldest surviving Fuller-built dome is at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, built by students in three weeks in 1953.
- With Shoji Sadao, Fuller designed the dome of the United States Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, now the Montreal Biosphère.
Within a few years, thousands of geodesic domes had been built around the world.
Legacy
Fuller's emphasis on doing more with less material anticipated later interest in lightweight and resource-efficient structures.
Sources
- Buckminster FullerWikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Geodesic domeWikipedia · en.wikipedia.org