THE MIND BEHIND THE DOME

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Above: Buckminster Fuller in front of the U.S. Pavilion, a massive geodesic dome in Montreal, Canada. Photos: COBIS/BETTMAN-UPI COBIS/BETTMAN-UPI

In 1927, Buckminster Fuller, then 32, stood at the edge of a freezing Lake Michigan and resolved to throw himself into the water, thus ending a life he deemed "wasted." His young daughter had recently died, leaving him, his wife and remaining infant daughter in a world of grief and desperation. A college dropout and by most accounts thoroughly uncomfortable in his own skin, Fuller was unable to keep hold of a steady idea, much less a job that supplied even the basic necessities for his family. But as he stood and pondered the end of his young life, he was struck suddenly by the notion that the enemy crushing his spiri t and informing his death was actually his own ego, and that he would do better to commit "ego-cide" rather than suicide. He chose at that moment to think and work on behalf of all humanity, rejecting personal gain and aggrandizement in the process. "An experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity" saved him from drowning and his family from renewed heartbreak.

Over the following

50 years, the "experiment" resulted in the following: 50 U.S. patents, 28 authored books, 47 honorary degrees in engineering and the humanities, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest national honor that a private citizen can receive) and dozens of other awards. From an architectural standpoint alone, he may well be the greatest American thinker of the 20th century.

Coining a term that is now part of science's vocabulary, he found that a lack of "synergy," or interconnectedness, was apparent in the social and architectural systems of the day. Addressing the latter concern, he proposed a shelter that enclosed more space with fewer materials than any other. A dome composed of interlocking triangles would not only have the virtue of accomplishing this, but would also provide tremendous tensile strength and wind resistance. It took a commission from the U.S. Pavilion at Montreal's Expo'67 to convince the world of the aesthetic and structural integrity of the geodesic principle. Fuller describes the system himself: