Monday, September 22, 2008

Buckminster Fuller


To the Whitney, to catch the last day of the Buckminster Fuller exhibition. The Whitney is in the hushed-wealth environs of the Upper-West side. It reminds me of the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank in London - concrete brutalist architecture. Its a better building however - more generous in its welcome. Buckminster Fuller was an extraordinary maverick figure of twentieth century America, most famous for his invention of the geodesic dome (see the image of the Montreal Biosphere designed by Buckminster Fuller) - the design principle for the Eden Project in Cornwall. He was an ecological-systems thinker decades before almost anyone else, coining the phrase 'spaceship earth' and the idea of there being a 'world game.' He designed a car in the 1930s - the Dymaxion - that looks like its 1960s futurism. Extraordinary indeed.

2 comments:

CodLiverOil 6:40 pm  

Makes me wonder, does Nigeria share the same planet as such well designed space, where human endeavour is allowed to express itself, in a well controlled and thoughtful environment?

Will Nigeria ever make it? ie pull itself up by the boot straps from the mire it has got itself bogged down in.

Goy 8:51 pm  

You may be interested in reading this profile of Mr Fuller - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_kolbert


Enjoy the exhibition!

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