
The high-tech ideas of Bucky Fuller - antigizmo
https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-high-tech-ideas-of-bucky-fuller-are-back-in-vogue
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cconcepts
> "Fuller told The New Yorker in 1966. Appealing to people to remedy their
> behaviour was a folly, because they’d simply never do it. Far wiser, Fuller
> thought, to build technology that circumvents the flaws in human behaviour –
> that is, ‘to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in
> preferred directions’. Instead of human-led design, he sought design-led
> humans"

You have to applaud Fuller for this insight which many similarly brilliant
minds don't seem to grasp. Perhaps he can be included in this group;

1) Geodesic domes are a mathematically brilliant design but hopelessly
impractical for many structures. Try fitting furniture in a curved house and
dealing with a shape that either causes you to bump your head when you get to
the edges or is so high in the center that you have an unnecessary volume to
heat/cool.

2) The dymaxion car was similarly brilliant but completely missed the real
reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the
dymaxion did not.

The guy was a genius in my opinion but the failure of his incredible ideas to
take off on a large scale shows that perhaps they appeal to my mind more for
their idealism than practicality.

NOTE: Am currently reading Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth

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zardo
>The dymaxion car was similarly brilliant but completely missed the real
reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the
dymaxion did not.

The dymaxion was considered cool. But it was going to be expensive, and it
earned a reputation as a death trap after a fatal crash at a marketing event.

~~~
cconcepts
Did not know about the crash.

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Animats
Geodesic domes are still a great technology. What went wrong was that the
"natural materials" people got into them. Fuller wanted to build dome
components in factories, where you could make aluminum and Fiberglas parts to
tight tolerances. The hippie types tried to use "natural materials", such as
wood and shingles. Their domes leaked. Abandoned steel, aluminum, and
Fiberglas domes of the 1950s Distant Early Warning line are still in good
shape.

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DennisP
My brother's renting a geodesic dome made of wood and roofed with shingles. No
leakage problems in evidence so far.

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melloclello
A friend of mine is from Carbondale, Illinois - Fuller's home town. From what
I understand it's a deadbeat midwestern hellhole now. He once told me a story
about breaking into Buckminster Fuller's now-abandoned dome house and smoking
weed in there.

tl;dr: the dream is over

~~~
leashless
The dream is alive. Look at [http://hexayurt.com](http://hexayurt.com) \-
massive adoption at Burning Man and huge potential (slowly being realized) for
developing world use.

Times will change. Fuller's time is yet to come.

~~~
RangerScience
The upsides of a hexayurt are many. Done well, they're possibly the best
housing on playa - definitely competitive with RVs, if you bring your own AC.
Mine's lasted five years, and all I've had to do was replace the door panel (a
door to the floor - resulting in a U shaped panel - is not the best plan).

But! These are, in my experience, the hard parts and downsides - not that
they're insurmountable, or even all that difficult, but worth mentioning:

1) Doors are hard. No, really.

2) Storage & Transportation. (8ft by 4ft+ by 8in+)

3) Can't lean on the walls

4) Short doors get annoying, fast.

Anecdotally, I'm definitely seeing more hexayurts out there each year,
particularly the small stretch designs (which are fantastic, btdubs)

