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"A pleasure to read." –Architectural Review
"A wonderful, nontechnical introduction to one of this century′s most fascinating minds." –Whole Earth Review
"Original . . . [and] valuable, because it describes . . . Fuller′s original techniques." –Architectural Record.
Architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, visionary humanist, educator, inspirational orator, and bestselling author, R. Buckminster Fuller has been rightly called "the 20th–century Leonardo da Vinci." Written by a fellow inventor who worked with Fuller for more than three decades, BuckyWorks is an inspiring celebration of the man, his ideas, his inventions –and his legacy for our future. Featuring over 200 photographs and drawings, plus dozens of fascinating excerpts from Fuller′s lectures and conversations with the author, this book offers a breathtaking inside look at one of the truly great minds of our time.
J. BALDWIN is an inventor and teacher who worked under, with, and for R. Buckminster Fuller for more than three decades. He served as an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review for 25 years.
"A wonderful, nontechnical introduction to one of this century′s most fascinating minds." –Whole Earth Review
"Original . . . [and] valuable, because it describes . . . Fuller′s original techniques." –Architectural Record.
Architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, visionary humanist, educator, inspirational orator, and bestselling author, R. Buckminster Fuller has been rightly called "the 20th–century Leonardo da Vinci." Written by a fellow inventor who worked with Fuller for more than three decades, BuckyWorks is an inspiring celebration of the man, his ideas, his inventions –and his legacy for our future. Featuring over 200 photographs and drawings, plus dozens of fascinating excerpts from Fuller′s lectures and conversations with the author, this book offers a breathtaking inside look at one of the truly great minds of our time.
J. BALDWIN is an inventor and teacher who worked under, with, and for R. Buckminster Fuller for more than three decades. He served as an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review for 25 years.
From the Back Cover
"A pleasure to read." –Architectural Review
"A wonderful, nontechnical introduction to one of this century′s most fascinating minds." –Whole Earth Review
"Original . . . [and] valuable, because it describes . . . Fuller′s original techniques." –Architectural Record.
Architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, visionary humanist, educator, inspirational orator, and bestselling author, R. Buckminster Fuller has been rightly called "the 20th–century Leonardo da Vinci." Written by a fellow inventor who worked with Fuller for more than three decades, BuckyWorks is an inspiring celebration of the man, his ideas, his inventions –and his legacy for our future. Featuring over 200 photographs and drawings, plus dozens of fascinating excerpts from Fuller′s lectures and conversations with the author, this book offers a breathtaking inside look at one of the truly great minds of our time.
J. BALDWIN is an inventor and teacher who worked under, with, and for R. Buckminster Fuller for more than three decades. He served as an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review for 25 years.
"A wonderful, nontechnical introduction to one of this century′s most fascinating minds." –Whole Earth Review
"Original . . . [and] valuable, because it describes . . . Fuller′s original techniques." –Architectural Record.
Architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, visionary humanist, educator, inspirational orator, and bestselling author, R. Buckminster Fuller has been rightly called "the 20th–century Leonardo da Vinci." Written by a fellow inventor who worked with Fuller for more than three decades, BuckyWorks is an inspiring celebration of the man, his ideas, his inventions –and his legacy for our future. Featuring over 200 photographs and drawings, plus dozens of fascinating excerpts from Fuller′s lectures and conversations with the author, this book offers a breathtaking inside look at one of the truly great minds of our time.
J. BALDWIN is an inventor and teacher who worked under, with, and for R. Buckminster Fuller for more than three decades. He served as an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review for 25 years.
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"I'd like to introduce myself as the world's most successful failure." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"I'd like to introduce myself as the world's most successful failure." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Beginners Buckminster Fuller Excellent general introduction to Mr Fuller's ideas and inventions. I'd encourage everyone to read Fuller's writing or about him and feel inspired to do something about the state of the world - think hard as to how we should be treating the world's resources... See his alternative map of the world and his futuristic architecture. Also visit the official website to find out more. See the telegram that explains relativity in a short paragraph, a timeline of technological advances through to modern day... he's got a molecule named after him, and ideas that knit science, design/art, politics and philosophy together.Most of all be introduced to some very forward thinking ideas.I would give the book four crowns since I have read 'Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth' (now out of print) by Fuller himself but Bucky works is a very good place to start. Good for a kids introduction as well. Comes highly recommended. Go on buy it, it's worth it, then lend to to your friends and split the cost!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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10 reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
A Man Before His Time
21 Jan 2006
Format:Paperback
Inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller, "Bucky," died in l983 at age 88. He is known the world over for his invention of the geodesic dome. The author of this book knew him for 31 years.
Bucky, as he was known to everyone, (except his wife of 66 years) was not a college graduate, yet he received 47 honorary degrees during his lifetime. His influence on architectural and product designing was--and still is--tremendous.
This book is of interest not only as a tribute to his inventiveness, but for detailing why many of his concepts, to this day, have not been accepted. The full-page cartoon on page 20 is a classic example of his frustration. It depicts an automobile being made on the driveway of a home. Bucky argued for years how ridiculous it is that we build houses 'from scratch' on a house lot. If we built cars that way, as the cartoon shows, they would cost $300,000! It should be noted that the American Institute of Architects (AIA), in 1928, passed a resolution "...on record as inherently opposed to any peas-in-a-pod-line reproducible designs." Others, sewer system builders, carpenters, electricians, etc., indicated they too would oppose home-building innovations.
One reason the geodesic dome concept succeeded was that the military did not need to consult zoning and codes when it needed a transportable light weight and super strong structure for a mountain top or an Arctic location.
You will be amazed at how much his 1934 car designs resemble today's vans. Equally amazing is his "traveling cartridge," a small car transportable by air or rail. No need to rent a car. It could even be used as a sleeping unit.
His "Triton City" was designed as a floating city (100,000 people) for Tokyo Bay. You see variations of this idea almost every year and it is invariably presented as a new idea. His "Fly's Eye" dome is now under commercial development and you may be seeing into the future when scanning this section of the book.
An example of the tremendous respect for Fuller's concepts can be seen in the naming of the 60-atom carbon molecule discovered in the early 1970s. It is called "buckminsterfullerene" and is often referred to as "Buckyball." Its soccer-ball-pentagon-hexagon pattern very much relates to Fuller's icosahedron-based constructions.
Fuller maintained that the entire universe, from atoms to galaxies, "is make made up of islands of compression in a continuous sea of tension." This "tensegrity" concept may even apply to biological cells according to a recent (1993) paper by Dr. Ingber.
As the author often notes, Fuller--as a person and as a designer--had his faults. However his accomplishments and his influence on others far outshine his failures. Many inventors can relate to the problems due to being "before your time" and to the difficulty of displacing the "established way" of doing something.
This book is crammed with photos, many never before published. Buy it, enjoy it. Donate it to your local school library. There is a whole new generation out there that can be inspired by it.
Bucky, as he was known to everyone, (except his wife of 66 years) was not a college graduate, yet he received 47 honorary degrees during his lifetime. His influence on architectural and product designing was--and still is--tremendous.
This book is of interest not only as a tribute to his inventiveness, but for detailing why many of his concepts, to this day, have not been accepted. The full-page cartoon on page 20 is a classic example of his frustration. It depicts an automobile being made on the driveway of a home. Bucky argued for years how ridiculous it is that we build houses 'from scratch' on a house lot. If we built cars that way, as the cartoon shows, they would cost $300,000! It should be noted that the American Institute of Architects (AIA), in 1928, passed a resolution "...on record as inherently opposed to any peas-in-a-pod-line reproducible designs." Others, sewer system builders, carpenters, electricians, etc., indicated they too would oppose home-building innovations.
One reason the geodesic dome concept succeeded was that the military did not need to consult zoning and codes when it needed a transportable light weight and super strong structure for a mountain top or an Arctic location.
You will be amazed at how much his 1934 car designs resemble today's vans. Equally amazing is his "traveling cartridge," a small car transportable by air or rail. No need to rent a car. It could even be used as a sleeping unit.
His "Triton City" was designed as a floating city (100,000 people) for Tokyo Bay. You see variations of this idea almost every year and it is invariably presented as a new idea. His "Fly's Eye" dome is now under commercial development and you may be seeing into the future when scanning this section of the book.
An example of the tremendous respect for Fuller's concepts can be seen in the naming of the 60-atom carbon molecule discovered in the early 1970s. It is called "buckminsterfullerene" and is often referred to as "Buckyball." Its soccer-ball-pentagon-hexagon pattern very much relates to Fuller's icosahedron-based constructions.
Fuller maintained that the entire universe, from atoms to galaxies, "is make made up of islands of compression in a continuous sea of tension." This "tensegrity" concept may even apply to biological cells according to a recent (1993) paper by Dr. Ingber.
As the author often notes, Fuller--as a person and as a designer--had his faults. However his accomplishments and his influence on others far outshine his failures. Many inventors can relate to the problems due to being "before your time" and to the difficulty of displacing the "established way" of doing something.
This book is crammed with photos, many never before published. Buy it, enjoy it. Donate it to your local school library. There is a whole new generation out there that can be inspired by it.
41 of 49 people found the following review helpful
When do we declare victory in The Industrial Revolution?
16 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
Buckminster Fuller has fascinated me since my teens because of his borderline science-fictional ideas and his quest to use technology to provide for 100% of humanity -- which unfortunately is a moving target during an era of population growth. Baldwin's book doesn't quite satisfy my curiosity about the current state of Fuller's posthumous work, since he gives me the impression that it's stuck somewhere back in the post-Hippie 1970's. I certainly hope that the field has advanced further along than the dumbed-down "Whole Earth Catalogs" version which celebrated geodesic model kits and "sustainable" (i.e., voluntarily hardship-inducing) technologies.
What I would like to see in a proper review of Fuller's legacy includes (a) mathematicians' assessment of his synergetic geometry, which is more radically anti-Euclidean than non-Euclidean in that it rejects the whole Greek paradigm of "abstraction" from physical objects; (b) economists' assessment of his argument that with proper resource use and rational design decisions we really could take care of 100% of humanity; (c) a discussion of why, if Fuller's goal is indeed practical, after 250 years of industrial and technological progress we've devolved from objectively useful work -- making and moving stuff on farms, in mines and in factories -- into to a situation where we hold absurd, time-wasting and nonproductive "jobs" in "services" (which sociologist Daniel Bell characterized as postindustrial "games between persons"), while billions of other humans don't even have the basics for a materially decent life; (d) and why this goal isn't on the agenda of any major politician or other world-recognized and respected figure.
In other words, I find implicit in Fuller's work the question, "When do we declare victory in the Industrial Revolution, and go on our long-overdue vacation that futurists used to call 'The Postindustrial Leisure Society'?" Although Baldwin supplied me with some useful information on "Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today," it wasn't quite what I wanted.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
This is the book for learning total design and about the man himself
9 Oct 2006
Format:Paperback
I bought tis book several years ago based on a recommendation as a good intro th Buckys work. This book is a gem for all of those who are inclined to engineering and design, not only because of the explanations and ilustrations, but also as testimonial to the thought of the great genius.
Im still amazed that Bucky's thought have not been embraced by us modern citizens.
I am trying to introduce a revolutionary solar coating here in Venezuela [..], I think of the aluminum domes built in Ghana that used natural convection for cooling, and people thoight they were in fact to cold!!! sustainable development has been around longer than we thought, are we ever going to strat smelling the coffee???
Im still amazed that Bucky's thought have not been embraced by us modern citizens.
I am trying to introduce a revolutionary solar coating here in Venezuela [..], I think of the aluminum domes built in Ghana that used natural convection for cooling, and people thoight they were in fact to cold!!! sustainable development has been around longer than we thought, are we ever going to strat smelling the coffee???
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