The Design District
Architects of the Future
I’m in a very Bucky Fuller mood. Inventor of the geodesic dome, the phrase “spaceship earth,” the Dymaxion house, a three-wheeled car, and the forefather of the sustainability movement, Buckminster Fuller has thankfully reentered the collective consciousness with the recent show at the Whitney, the very Fullerian notions embodied in the Cooper Hewitt’s traveling show Design for the other 90%, and of course with the increased urgency of addressing global warming in a comprehensive (to use another favorite Fuller word) way. And while the products here don’t have the conceptual punch of those comprehensive, anticipatory projects proposed in response to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, if they are on the pretty rather than worldchanging end of the design spectrum, they remind us nonetheless that Bucky’s back. And just in time.
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. “ —R. Buckminster Fuller
A 21st century thinker in a 20th century world Fuller—engineer, philosopher, poet, proto-sustainability guru&mdashand his thinking are now distilled into a one-man play at Portland Center Stage, R Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe
