18 Bucky

2 In the early 1950s, when I was a student in the United States, Bucky was visiting professor at several architectural schools. I was lucky enough to be at two of them—first as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and then a year later in the Master’s class at MIT.

3 On both occasions, Bucky was a tour de force. He just knocked us out—with his ideas, his energy, and his superb and intuitive grasp of the forces that make the world around us. But perhaps the most extraordinary quality Bucky possessed—and one for which I think history will best remember him—was his ability to connect different things, different disciplines, different states of mind. “Only connect!” cried E. M. Forster. But it takes an intuitive and synergetic understanding of the forces that shape our environment, and our lives, to make this happen.

4 As visiting professor, Bucky would undertake a short project with the students, usually the design and construction of a specific structure. And as a background to this enterprise, Bucky gave wonderful lectures—at least one a day, each three to four hours long, traversing great stretches of time and space. These discourses provided the general theory from which Bucky could then launch the project he had in mind. At Michigan, I recall it was to design domes for the radar stations being built within the Arctic Circle. Bucky’s idea was incredibly simple. As a young naval cadet, he had noticed that the air vents on ships were usually surmounted by small louvered globes, so that as the sea winds swirled the blades of the vents around, air was sucked up out of the innards of the ship: kitchens, boiler rooms, and so forth. What Bucky had conceived of for the Arctic Circle was not just his usual dome house, but a revolving dome house, with its surface made up of blades which could be angled to pick up the strong polar winds, and thus spin faster and faster until the whole dome itself became invisible. In short, one would be using the forces of Nature to make an invisible house.

5 What a brilliant idea! Can you imagine sitting in the viciously hostile environment of the Arctic Circle, warm as toast, with the comforts of life around, and with your domain stretching to the horizon in all directions, without any visible obstruction? Bucky went further. By adjusting the angle of the blades (as in an airplane propeller), the amount of air changes within the dome could be controlled—the ultimate Machine for Living.

6 Forthwith our class enthusiastically broke up into teams to make a full- scale working model—using an electric motor to propel aluminum blades attached around the perimeter of a bicycle wheel. Within a few days the working model was ready, and there was very great excitement indeed as the motor was started and the blades of the dome began to rotate. Since we couldn’t test the contraption with real water, we threw uncooked rice toward the rotating blades, from the mezzanine level of our studio. Regardless of how fast we tried to get the blades to turn, just about every grain of rice went right through and hit the floor.

7 Was this a failure? No, strangely enough, Bucky had succeeded. Not in

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19 COURTESY OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER. 5ADAO & ZUNG ARCHITECTS

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26 constructing a working model of his idea—obviously the crude technical means at our disposal ruled that out. Where he had won was in making you realize that such a concept was within the domain of the architect—and with that, he opened a door in your mind. It is an experience I have never forgotten.

27 Years later, after I had returned to Bombay, Bucky often visited India, sometimes alone, sometimes with family and friends. On each of these occasions it was a joy to meet him. For like a true student, Bucky had always found something new which he would share, and the deeply thoughtful and optimistic aspects of his nature continued to illuminate our Eves. In this respect, I do not know why he bothered to call himself an architect—he encompassed an infinitely richer world than that meager label implies. But to the extent that Bucky was part of the architectural scene, I think he brought to our profession something invaluable: his work made one realize that the next important vector in the Modern Movement was not the silly conceits (strip windows and white walls) of the so-called International Style, but the right to invent. The right, as in Bucky’s own ineffable phrase, to rearrange the scenery. The very same mandate by which the great nineteenth-century engineers, from George Stephenson or Isadore Brunel on, had started a process which produced some of the most profoundly moving images we know, far more potent than any Beaux Arts architect has ever accomplished: the suspension bridge high above the harbor, the railway rain streaking across the countryside, the ocean liner sailing out of port, the airplane coming in to land.

28 Like those great forerunners who preferred to create extraordinarily beautiful objects (rather than quibble over questions of style), Bucky could produce something as elegant as his Dymaxion cars—without bothering to mention their looks. Indeed, his life and work remind us all that the Modern Movement in architecture was much more than just a style—at its very best, it underscored perhaps the most fundamental human need of all: the need to rearrange the scenery. And in the process, invent a new future.

29 Part XXIX

30 Vital Statistics of Industrialization from Untitled Epic

31 Poem on the History of Industrialization

32
33 Industrialization may be delineated
34 in two important ways.
35 The first, most obvious and most frequently employed, is by per capita annual production in tons or dollars.
36 The second is by dynamic measurement.
37 The first method shows the per capita resources, rates of production, and a representative sample for instance
38 of manufactured articles of the U.S.A, compared with the rest of the world.
39 But this first method constitutes a static measurement of the economy. Even when it shows growth over a period of years, it does not show the reasons for growth or the meaning of growth.
40 For these we must turn to dynamic measurements.
41 In dynamic measurement matter is combined with energy by disciplined brainpower.
42 Dynamic measurement reveals for instance
43 the entire trend of U.S.A, industry:—which is
44 TO PRODUCE MORE WITH LESS—for the SATISFACTION OF ALL MEN.
45 This trend appears first in terms of what might be called perishables.
46 Industrially speaking, coal is a perishable, inasmuch as it is consumed by industry for the release of energy;
47 and the energy that can be released from a ton of coal

48 has increased threefold

49
50 in the last twenty years alone.
51 Therefore, statically speaking, a piece of coal is just a piece of coal; but, dynamically speaking, a piece of coal may become “three pieces” in respect to performance and in respect to man’s derived satisfaction.
52 And if that piece which has become three pieces in potential power release,—is not used until necessary, it may through new science gains become four pieces, dynamically, in potential power release,—Was this the meaning in the parable of the loaves and fishes?
53 This trend is even observable in food which is also consumed for the useful release of energy to operate the “integral mechanisms” of man which in turn relay the initial brain operation to the “external mechanism” for the amplification of force or increase in precision of ultimate work to be done.
54 U.S.A, man now eats recordably less, having less requirement of energy as physical work and less requirement of energy as integral heat
55 to maintain the preferential thermal conditions to the best functioning of the elaborate processes of his integral mechanics, in his now atmospherically better mechanical extended and controlled environment,
56 yet he jumps higher and runs faster than his father
57 and circles the world in days against his father’s year.
58 The trend is also visible for instance in the number of miles yielded per pound of tire rubber, increased fivefold in the last twenty years. And one of the most fascinating manifestations is to be found within the oil industry where the viscosity index of lubricating oil remained at 100,
59 (that of the best natural Pennsylvania oils misassumed to be the best that would ever be known) until 1930—
60 and has since shot nearly up to 200
61 by synthetic molecular design of researching man. But the viscosity index has also to do, among other things, with the life, pressure, and temperature limitations of the moving parts that are being lubricated;
62 also of course with the life of the oil.
63 Thus it is seen that the dynamic gains compound in their ramifications.
64 Another way to observe the dynamic trend is in the constant reduction
65 of manufacturing cost per ton of bituminous coal; cost per pound of electrolytic copper;
66 dollars per auto horsepower.
67 Or, to speak of cost in more human terms, in constantly reducing
68 automobile, railroad, and airplane deaths per passenger mile traveled, despite both increased speed and increasing population of road and rail cars and planes as well as of people;
69 by decreasing deaths per capita caused by infectious diseases or by industrial accidents;
70 and sum totally,
71 with increasing life expectancy at all the various ages
72 of the human beings in the U.S.A.
73 The high point of the charts illustrating this trend shows graphically
74 what the American standard of living really is.
75 This is done by showing how much more than a subsistence is the advancing standard of living, that is by charting
76 what the U.S.A, man can buy over and above the absolute necessities for a given amount of work hours rendered to industry by him.

77 This will be seen to be

78
79 more than favorably comparable with such excesses of other countries.
80 A second way in which industry delivers more for less
81 is graphically illustrated in the economic behavior of what might be called the “non-perishables,” chiefly the industrial metals, but also the organic materials, such as fiber, rubber.

82 The central factor here

83 is scrap material

84
85 which is salvaged, separated, and used over and over again.

86 The result of this recirculation is

87 that as time goes on

88
89 less new raw material is required to make a given weight of product.
90 Scrap in this sense is not “shoddy”
91 for the pure chemical elements iron or copper may be refined-out endlessly to ingot from discarded use forms.
92 In fact steel scrap becomes progressively enriched to higher ultimate strength with minor alloy constituents not worth separating out.
93 Scrap has been a special tactical factor in recent war economy
94 though of great economic importance throughout all old industrial countries.

95 In the U.S.A.

96
97 for certain reasons other than war scrap is highly important.
98 Here copper, for instance, seems almost to have reached what might be called a “scrap-point”; that is, the scrap supply is almost sufficient to meet all present domestic non-war needs, and very little copper has, therefore, to be mined for domestic use.
99 Also about 90 per cent of U.S.A, domestic consumption of steel is derived from scrap.
100 There is enough tin in the U.S.A, recirculating cycle to constitute a larger ore body than that in the Malay Straits Settlement whence it mostly originated.
101 Of course, practically speaking, scrap both as “new” and as combined old-and-new metal is both domestically consumed and exported so that these statements are only true in the terms of a net fact accounting.
102 The most interesting scrap situations are as already noted those of copper and steel, (though scrap is playing an important role in all non-perishable categories), for one reason among many, that it renders basic monopoly impossible.
103 Scrap also places economic emphasis upon business turnover rather than upon ownership.
104 Thirdly,
105 industry delivers more for less by causing a given amount of non-perishable material to do more work
106 or to be more effective.
107 Sometimes this is achieved by combining it more efficiently with energy; thus the average horsepower and cruising speed of automobiles have been constandy increased, without adding weight.
108 In the U.S.A. 1920-1940 there has been a vast increase in the proportion of energy consumption to that of tonnage consumption of industrial raw materials.
109 While one may find it difficult to “see” energy as constituent in products—in a pencil, a phonograph record—the energy component is nevertheless there and grows ever larger by numerical proportion to the tangible components.
110 Sometimes, if not always consciously more for less is effected by a better combination of materials through exercise of brainpower.
111 Thus by alloying or synthesizing elements under varying conditions, new stronger alloys are evolved whereby the same basic materials acquire a strength many times that indicated by their isolated properties;
112 for instance, two per cent of beryllium alloyed to copper
113 and thereafter jointly heat treated jumps copper’s tensile strength tenfold and provides a non-fatiguing metal, which, however, may happily be worked before heat treatment with all the facility
114 of pure annealed copper.
115 Thus also by mental ingenuity a two-hundredfold increase in messages per unit of telephone wires is effected.

116 Mavericks seem to be naturally attracted to each other. Bucky loved them, for they seemed to be more comfortable thinking outside the "rectangle." The "hip" Malcolm Forbes had four sons—Steve, CEO and publisher; Christopher (Kip), interested in the arts; Timothy, a producer of films; and Robert, all members of Forbes, Inc.—and a daughter, Moira. All are creative mavericks. Forbes demonstrates one piece of Fuller's advice to the young and others who would listen: "Do things that need doing." Regardless of one's personal political affiliation, one must respect Steve's tremendous efforts for what he believes. He has made some statements that will be long remembered in American political history. I commend him for his courage and tenacity in pursuing his goals as a presidential candidate.

117 Bucky Fuller, always apolitical, once remarked that if all politicians were jettisoned into space, there would be no appreciable effect on mankind, but if all scientists were lost, humanity would be in serious trouble. However, Fuller acknowledged that politics is necessary, akin to catching the common cold. In 1970 in an interview with Playboy magazine, Bucky is quoted as saying: "Politics exists and will always exist. . . but it must always be as accessory after the fact…an accessory after the fact of whatever the circumstances may be. …So I can see that we can get the political mood, the mood of man, to simply demand that their political parties on both sides merely yield in a direction that neither of them ever thought of before. The one will not yield to the other man's policy at all. He'll be yielding to the computer. And I find that anybody can yield to the computer. He can't lose face yielding to a machine." Bucky was always suspicious of "big government," so I believe he would have smiled at some of Steve's ideas. Here, Steve Forbes's contribution describes Bucky's vision of the future.