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Fuller, Richard Buckminster (Milton, Mass., 1895 - Los Angeles, 1983)

From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of 20th Century Architecture
Not an architect in the usual sense of the word, but instead a unique reflection of those 20th-century concepts related to the machine aesthetic. His formal education was sketchy and did not progress much beyond two years at Harvard, 1913–15. In 1927 he perfected a kind of ‘machine for living in’ which he called the ‘Dymaxion [dynamic plus maximum efficiency] House’. In contrast to the poetic expressions of the machine age which were so frequently manifested in the buildings of the 1920s in Europe, and especially in Le Corbusier 's Villa Savoye (1929–31), Fuller's product was a machine for living in in a literal rather than in a metaphorical sense. Unlike the contemporary masterpieces of European Rationalism , the Dymaxion House was not in any consequential way an object for aesthetic contemplation, but is more correctly viewed as an assemblage of mechanical services in conjunction with living areas. In 1933 Fuller developed a motorized version of this idea in his ‘Dymaxion…
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Full text Article Fuller Popularizes Geodesic Dome

From Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
During the late 1940s American inventor and architect R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) developed an innovative structural concept he called a geodesic dome, which consisted of a series of intersecting triangles arranged to form a spherical shape. Designed around principles of efficiency and…
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Full text Article Buckyball

From The Big Idea: How Breakthroughs of the Past Shape the Future Full text Article Chemistry & Materials
Date: 1985 The theoretical existence of a molecule made of multiple carbon atoms and shaped as a sphere or a cylinder was predicted as early as 1965. But not until 20 years later did Richard Smalley and Robert Curl, both professors at Rice University in Houston, Texas, U.S., and Harry Kroto, a…
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Full text Article Fuller, Richard Buckminster (1895-1983)

From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design Since 1900
Was one of the USA's most radical 20th-century inventor-designers. He studied mathematics at Harvard University (1913-15), from which he was sent down twice, and then served in the US Navy (1917-19) before working for a meat company, Armour and Company, until 1922. He then became president of a…
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Full text Article Fuller, (Richard) Buckminster (1895–1983)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
US architect, engineer, and social philosopher. He embarked on an unorthodox career in an attempt to maximize energy resources through improved technology. In 1947 he invented the lightweight geodesic dome, a hemispherical space-frame of triangular components linked by rods, independent of buttress…
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Full text Article SPACE

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
The spacious firmament on high,With all the blue ethereal sky,And spangled heavens, a shining frame,Their great Original proclaim. ADDISON, Joseph The Spectator , 1712. [On the Ptolemaic system of astronomy] If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon Creation, I should have…
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Full text Article Fuller, Buckminster

From American Environmental Leaders
Buckminster Fuller as a young man.
(July 12, 1895–July 1, 1983) Architect, Inventor Buckminster Fuller is most often remembered as an architect who designed buildings with an eye for the future. His lifelong goal was to develop a science of design that would solve the world's major problems, such as poverty and housing shortages, …
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Full text Article Fuller, R. Buckminster

From American Biographies: American Social Leaders and Activists
(b. 1895–d. 1983) inventor, architect, philosopher An inventor, engineer, and philosopher, Richard Buckminster Fuller Jr., is best known for his design of the geodesic dome. He was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1895, to Richard Buckminster Fuller, Sr., a wealthy Boston tea and leather…
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Full text Article Fuller, R. Buckminster

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(Richard Buckminster Fuller), 1895–1983, American architect and engineer, b. Milton, Mass. Fuller devoted his life to the invention of revolutionary technological designs aimed at solving problems of modern living. His developments include “energetic” geometry (1917); the “4-D” house (1928), a…
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Full text Article Fuller, Buckminster

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
Biosphere from Expo 67, Montreal....
(12 July 1895–1 July 1983; Richard Buckminster F.) The architectural historian Wayne Andrews (1913–87) identified, in his Architecture, Ambition, and Americans (1955), two indigenous architectural traditions, producing buildings as fundamentally different as their rationales. One, typified in…
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(born July 12, 1895, Milton, Mass., U.S.—died July 1, 1983, Los Angeles, Calif.) American engineer and architect R. Buckminster Fuller developed the geodesic dome, the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure, and the only practical kind of building that has no…
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