Richard Buckminster Fuller Overview

In 1927, jobless and distraught over the death of his daughter five years earlier, Richard Buckminster Fuller contemplated suicide. Instead of killing himself, he decided to live the rest of his life as an experiment for the benefit of humankind. He... [more]

In 1927, jobless and distraught over the death of his daughter five years earlier, Richard Buckminster Fuller contemplated suicide. Instead of killing himself, he decided to live the rest of his life as an experiment for the benefit of humankind. He re-christened himself "Guinea Pig B" (B stood for Bucky) and set out to change the world. Fuller saw the problems of humanity as engineering challenges. In his eyes, human misery was the result of inadequate access to or inefficient use of survival resources. With this in mind, he designed objects that provided "more for less." The geodesic dome and the Dymaxion House proved that strong, durable structures could be built with minimal materials. He created "Synergetics" as a philosophy of "omnieconomical design" based upon nature's examples. He also implemented the apolitical "World Game," a global simulation that tracks socioeconomic and environmental factors in order to solve various world crises. [show less]