Fuller, R(ichard) Buckminster

(born July 12, 1895, Milton, Mass., U.S.—died July 1, 1983, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. inventor, futurist, architect, and author. The grandnephew of Melville Fuller, he was expelled twice from Harvard University and never completed his college education. Failure in a prefab construction business led him to search for design patterns that would most efficiently use Earth's resources for humanity's greatest good. His innovations included the inexpensive, lightweight, factory-assembled Dymaxion House and the energy-efficient, omnidirectional Dymaxion Car. He developed a vectorial system of geometry that he called “Energetic-Synergetic geometry”; its basic unit is the tetrahedron, which, when combined with octahedrons, forms the most economic space-filling structures. This led Fuller to design the geodesic dome, the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure, and the only practical kind of building that has no limiting dimensions (i.e., beyond which the structural strength must be insufficient).

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