The Art of Design Science
Published by Lars Müller Publishers
In light of the constant interest in R. Buckminster Fuller’s works and thoughts, and their growing importance for our technological world, Lars Müller Publishers has decided to reprint the comprehensive and legendary 1999 publication Your Private Sky. The visual reader examines and documents Fuller’s theories, ideas and projects, and explores his ideology of “rescue through technology.”
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was one of the most revolutionary technological visionaries of the 20th century. He established new standards that can be seen as decisive for future-capable design. “How to make the world work”—to this task he dedicated his unflagging attention.
As an architect, engineer, entrepreneur and poet, he was a quintessentially American self-made man. But he was also an outsider: a technologist with a poet’s imagination who already developed theories of environmental control in the thirties and who anticipated the globalization of our planet. Catchphrases of our time like “Spaceship Earth,” “synergetic,” or “think global, act local” can directly or indirectly be traced back to Bucky.
Lars Müller Publishers has published several titles collecting the ideas and theories of Buckminster Fuller. The comprehensive volume Utopia and Oblivion is composed of essays illustrating Fuller’s idea that humanity—for the first time in its history—has the opportunity to create a world where the needs of all humans are met. And it Came to Pass – Not to Stay brings together a selection of Buckminster Fuller’s lyrical and philosophical best. His essays put the task of ushering in a new era of humanity in the context of “always starting with the universe.”
One of Fuller’s most popular works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, is a brilliant synthesis of his worldview. In this very accessible volume, he questions the concept of specialization, calls for a design revolution of innovation, and offers advice on how to guide “Spaceship Earth” toward a sustainable future. In Ideas and Integrities, Buckminster Fuller describes the revolutionary designs and concepts he has pioneered—among them the geodesic dome, the Dymaxion world map and the Dymaxion 4-D house. Education Automation, written in 1962, brilliantly anticipated the need to rethink learning in light of a dawning revolution in informational technology.
Set for publication later this year is the book Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, which assembles documents related to various instances of the World Game played from 1969 to 1982. Initially proposed for the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Buckminster Fuller’s World Game was played for the first time in 1969 in New York. Across its different manifestations, the game remained focused on the goals of overcoming energy scarcity and altering conventional territorial politics through the redistribution of world resources.
Buckminster Fuller’s amazing and challenging ideas for the world of the future—ideas that would revolutionize everything from university education to bathroom design—are more relevant and topical than ever. They are ideas that, above all, demonstrate how we can and must make far more imaginative and efficient use of the resources now available to us to ensure a better standard of living for humankind.
