Fuller Afterthoughts
By John Taylor; 2008 May 16, 19 Jamal, 165 BE
Here is the next installment from a 2001 essay series on Buckminster Fuller. This looks at how Fuller's ideas of history, housing and mathematics were consummated in his most important invention, the geodesic dome.
==========
Geodesic Integrity, Part I
Originally written:
Buckminster Fuller discerned the causes of world disorder when the crisis was not obvious. He asked: Why not make houses on production lines using the best materials and the latest technology? Why can't recycling and energy independence be designed into a standardized built environment? Why do we insist that buildings be high priced and permanent rather than mobile and replaceable-when-obsolete, as are planes, ships and cars? These questions he raised, and we ignore them at our peril.
Fuller's signature invention was the geodesic dome, a spattering of triangles over a spherical space. The geodesic dome was no ordinary building, it is fully scalable. It can be made in all sizes, from the scale of a virus to the covering of an underwater city. Like all great innovations, it has a moral and spiritual dimension. Like much of Fuller's work, the geodesic dome intertwines with basic Baha'i ideals, like principle, unity and oneness.
Fuller did not however arrive at his invention without financial failures, agonized soul searching and following his own advice to "dare to be naive." We saw last time how Fuller entered a long depression after the death of his first daughter, which he blamed on post-war housing. He began to think that, unlike in traditional cultures, housing had become our last priority. In the building industry high technology was an afterthought, an unwelcome accretion to stable old ways. For example, vinyl and metal siding and windows imitate the look of the old wooden kind rather than taking advantage of their strength, light weight and stretchability. Airplanes and automobiles are covered by metal and composites formed into stressed skins. Why not do that with houses and other buildings, where we spend most of our time?
After much reflection, around 1927 at the time of the birth of his second daughter, Allegra, Fuller made a fateful decision. Unlike most people he would not put "making a living" first. Though not independently wealthy, he went ahead anyway. Like a religious saint who "puts the kingdom first," Fuller had strong faith that all else would be "added unto him." True, he got a lot of help from his friends, family and especially a patient and faithful wife. Unlike most, he acted on his belief that in future the word "unemployment" would become an anachronism, that,
"You will not equate work with earning a living. This is very important. Every human being has a deep drive within them to demonstrate competence to themselves and to others. It's going to be the greatest privilege of all in a new kind of world like that, to be allowed to be on the production team. It will have nothing to do with earning a living, nothing to do with upset."
Fuller believed that words matter, that they should not be squandered. Speech has to be genuine and true because "words are the first industrial tools." (Ideas, 39) If we are not careful with our words, built-in linguistic errors and imitations will distort our thought and drain out the effect of our actions. Hence, as we saw before, Fuller made a vow of silence. He swore not to say a word unless a demand for his words became evident.
"I wanted to be sure that when I did communicate that I really meant to communicate thusly and that this was me communicating and not someone else." (Ideas and Integrities, 47)
After he got the words right he turned to studying industry. The key to more for less was productivity, specifically mass production. He saw Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line as the most important contribution of the
Buckminster Fuller's worldview was unusual. It came out of a careful study of the history of technology that led to what can only be called a sort of physiocratic thesis. His idea was that through the ages the real leaders and innovators were engineers. History was formed by innovating geniuses throughout past ages who learned how to educate themselves in a comprehensive way. These original generalists were sages, scientists and, most often, sea captains. Seagoing peoples were the
This came about because captaining a ship was the first trade that demanded a comprehensive education. A ship's captain had no choice but to understand money, business and mostly our planet, from its capricious weather to the ocean currents and the stars overhead. Every day these brave generalists bet their lives and fortunes on completely theoretical calculations. The sea captains over the millennia grasped the principles of navigation. When they knew them well enough they were freed from hugging the sea coasts. Their grasp of invisible mathematical figures showed the path over vast, trackless oceans led to an age of discovery.
Buckminster Fuller thought of his invention of the geodesic dome as the next step in a long tradition, begun by sea captains, of theorizing, calculating and deducing ways to do more with less, a process he called synergy. Plying the sea lanes, when the ancient seafarers reached a landfall they had instant shelter. All they had to do was turn over their boats and its hull acted as an instant, lightweight-but-stable waterproof cover. Upside-down boats were the first dome home. Around the world igloos, tents, yurts, huts, and other kinds of dome proved over thousands of years to be the most durable and efficient constructions.
But building, the most important industry of all, was left out of this loop. Transport and communications are calculated in terms of "environment control per unit of expended energy," (Ideas, 92). Why not architecture? Like the ship turned over to provide mobile shelter, housing should apply the latest, most mobile and efficient technology available. But, lost in imitative "unthinking," we do the reverse, we do less for more. We scrimp on primitive, sub-standard shelter in order to pump money into the most high-tech military advances, which are inherently wasteful.
Fuller called this the "weaponry rather than livingry" problem. No expense is spared for guns, the latest aircraft carriers and robotic "predator" flying drones for blowing things up, while at the same time houses are still rooted in the earth, built by hand from dirt and mud. Even today few are mass produced or recyclable because city planning actively discourages innovation, flexibility or motion in the building industry. A bullying, conflict model in the workplace leads to unions and an attitude of "workers versus owners." This polarizes the economy and assures that buildings will continue to sit on an inert mass of pipes and connectors, a system that was ancient in the time of the Ancient Greeks.
The housing and the building industry inform intimately all that we do, all day, all night. Yet we leave it as our last priority. The basic economies of mass production get shunted aside by a morass of variant local building codes designed to keep the building trades a medieval handicraft industry. The few houses made by the latest techniques on an assembly line are so-called "mobile homes," which are literally marginalized into trailer parks. The poor who live there are in apartheid, stigmatized as "trailer trash." The real "trailer trash," of course, are our planners and policy makers who think in a reverse fashion to the ship captains.
"Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking." (Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1963)
Still, Fuller admired the relatively comprehensive education of architects and believed that by rights they should be the natural successors of the old sea captains. Just as doctors are responsible for our inner environment, the architect plans and designs our outer environment. But it was a love-hate relationship. Like Socrates, Fuller went around goading architects. He asked them an unheard-of question: Did they know how much their buildings weigh? None did. Such sloppiness would be inconceivable for an auto, ship or aircraft designer. In industrial processes an expert builds machines according to fine tolerances and exacting demands. But in housing it is ridiculous: a customer tells the architect what he must make. If passengers had that kind of say in the construction of a jet airliner, it would never get off the ground.
It was one thing to criticize and quite another to come up with conclusive proof that one's contrary assumptions are valid. This is the mark of genius. Fuller's breakthrough came after years of mostly unsuccessful experience in the building trade, his invention and building of a three wheeled "Dymaxion" car, and long cogitation over Einstein's relativity theory, which resulted in his first book, Nine Chains to the Moon.
In the late 1940's Buckminster Fuller hit upon the discovery that justified all his seemingly unproductive theorizing. He often said that 99 percent of what we are, of what makes us unique as individuals and as a species, is invisible. Baha'is use the word "spiritual" rather than invisible, but the result is the same. Fuller's non-visible and untouchable calculations took place in the realm of mind and theory and arrived finally at the visible, beautiful and amazing construction called the geodesic dome.
Long experience in the building industry led Fuller to the realization that every structure bigger than a certain size must balance three factors, compression, tension and integrity. Normal construction puts one block on top of the other and thus directs tremendous push into the foundation. Elaborate flying arches were built in the middle ages to absorb the tension that a large stone structure places on the walls and foundation. The taller a large building like a skyscraper gets the greater the pulling forces become and the more likely the foundations will prove inadequate. For this reason it is impossible to cover more than a very restricted space using traditional construction techniques.
So before working out the geodesic dome, Fuller had to devise a geometric system that combines spheres and triangles. In spherical geometry sections or arcs of a great circle, the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, are called geodesics (Greek for "earth dividing). First, second and third degree geodesic domes divide the sphere into more and more great circles, triangles and hexahedrons. Fuller's first dome took two years of hard manual calculation to arrive at a final design, and it collapsed upon completion.
The geodesic dome perfectly combines the strength of the triangle with the most efficient space enclosure possible, the sphere. By arranging triangles along geodesic circles compression and tension are maximized and combined into what Fuller calls integrity, the ability of whole and part to hold together as one. A geodesic dome has such integrity that when a load is placed on any one part of it the entire structure absorbs the stress. When the struts of a geodesic dome were measured it was shown that all the struts will shrink a certain distance whenever a heavy weight is hung from any one of them.
The complete harmony of tension, compression and integrity found in geodesic domes is unique in the history of construction. They were examples of Fuller's famous slogan, "more for less," also called "minimax," maximum results for minimum investment. The walls came together with maximum strength and enclose the most space for the minimum materials. Whereas before anything above a certain size would collapse under its own weight, with geodesic domes there is no theoretical limit to how large they can be built. In this kind of construction the main problem is not how to bolster the foundation, since the real "foundation" of a geodesic dome is in the "tensegrity" of its walls and roof, rather the chief worry is how to moor the structure so as to keep it from flying off in a strong wind.
Of course today a dollar-store calculator can do the math that took Fuller years to work out in a split second. And decades of experience building geodesic domes have worked out the early problems they had with leaking. The design is successful esthetically too; it has become a symbol of the modern, united world. (I would love to see a Baha'i temple built out of a geodesic dome!)
Fuller did not hesitate to envision the furthest possible application of this invention. By combining the integrity of the foundation into its "walls" and "roof" there was no longer any need for buildings to cling to dirt, which is symbolic of our minds no longer needing to cling to presuppositions of scarcity. Fuller wrote:
"...if we solve the energy & food problems, how do we provide good, inexpensive housing for everyone? Simple. Shelter people in mass-produced, self-contained, surplus-energy-producing, geodesic dome homes which would be helicopter-delivered to anywhere for a tenth the cost of conventional houses."
He calculated that if the air in a very large dome is only a degree or two hotter than the surrounding atmosphere that the dome would float off like a large hot air balloon. After a certain size ordinary materials become transparent. Then sun energy enters in freely and heats the dome. This enables practicable but astonishing ideas like covering over an entire city like
"A geodesic sphere is the lightest, strongest, and cheapest way of enclosing space ever invented. Domes can not only house individual families, but they could cover whole cities---and even float in the air or be anchored on or under the oceans. Domed cities use about 1/90th the energy of uncovered cities, and have perfect climates all year round---no matter what the outside climate."
More recent scientific discoveries have confirmed Fuller's triangled dome concept. They show that the efficiency and strength of these structures was long ago "discovered" in nature. Powerful microscopes found viruses that perfectly mimic Fuller's domed structure. Further confirmation came in the Eighties when microscopic "buckyball" and "buckytube" configurations of carbon were discovered and named after Fuller's nickname, "Bucky." These were immediately recognizable as miniature geodesic domes or, in other configurations, as his other invention, the octet truss.
Of course the fact that geodesic structures grow blindly in nature in no way diminishes the brilliance of Fuller's invention. He it was who explained and demonstrated why geodesics are so unbelievably strong. Words, and mathematical formulas, truly are the first industrial tools.
Much more than the diamond, this new "buckytube" form of carbon is at the theoretical limit of strength in nature. A substance made of buckytubes would be by far the strongest structure ever devised. If nano-engineering machines are devised to build longer buckytubes and mass produce them inside composites, materials with virtually unlimited strength would be possible. Planning is already underway to use them in the construction of the long dreamed of "elevator into space." This will be a giant tube extending hundreds of miles into low earth orbit. This a space elevator would eliminate the need for rockets and all the pollution they cause. It would make sending people and material into orbit far cheaper; a trip into space could become a vacation cheap enough for most to afford.
The next installment will peek into the moral and spiritual aspects of geodesic integrity.
No comments:
Post a Comment