Buckminster Fuller Bibliography


BFB2016

Buckminster Fuller Bibliography by Trevor Blake.

One thousand five hundred entries by and about Buckminster Fuller. Books, magazines, newspapers and ephemera published between 1914 and 2015.

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (1895 – 1983) was a public speaker, author, mathematician and inventor. Fuller is best known as the popularizer of geodesic domes in architecture. He attempted to apply the most recent discoveries of science to the most basic of human needs such as shelter and transportation, without regard for precedent or profit or power, doing more with less. He called this process design science.

Paperback
260 pages
Introduction, Bibliography, Index
$17.50

ISBN 978-1944651022

http://amzn.to/1Yq3cmX





Synergetics Stew July 2013


Ownership is going to go - not because it is politically unattractive, but because it is onerous. Man thought he had roots, not legs, and could keep many treasures. Now that we have refrigerators and cans, he doesn’t have to go where his roots are. He goes where his legs can take him. Museums existed when we had roots. Now we should take things out of museums and put them were they belong. Young people will be able to go around the world to see these things. Do you know they are rebuilding Babylon? - RBF interviewed by Lynn Sherr in Herald Advertiser, 25 October 1971.

The Buckminster Fuller Institute published the book Synergetic Stew: Explorations in Dymaxion Dining in 1982. Under this name, synchronofile.com publishes an irregular collection of brief notes relating to Buckminster Fuller.

☂ I continue to index the papers of the Buckminster Fuller Virtual Institute, donated by Joe Moore in 2013. My Fuller collection is now made up of tens of thousands of items and weights over five tons. These books, newspapers, magazines and other artifacts are available for study by appointment. As duplicates appear I am adding them to a lending library.

Divided Spheres / Geodesics and the Orderly Subdivision of the Sphere by Edward S. Popko (CRC Press: Boca Radon 2012) does us the tremendous honor of including synchronofile.com among only a small number of links in the reference section of this important book.

☂ Sam Green and Yo La Tengo continue to tour their show titled The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller. Each performance is unique, including information about Fuller’s relation to the location of the performance.

☂ The 50-foot Fly’s Eye dome commissioned by RBF and constructed by John Warren has been restored. After decades of rough storage in a California cow pasture, it is now on exhibition at the Toulouse International Art Festival in France.

☂ A fascinating collection of links on the mathematics of bee hives, specifically the hexagonal honeycomb. This is of interest to those following RBF’s claim that nature is efficient.

☂ R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE by D. W. Jacobs is not yet available on DVD. But sections of the play have been documented and are online. From the 2008 performance, a trailer. From the 2010 performance, a rehearsal and a trailer.

☂ Sam Lanahan accompanied Buckminster Fuller on his speaking tour of Southeast Asia in 1976. Currently he is promoting a new invention called FlexBlox.

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com





Synergetics Stew June 2011


The Buckminster Fuller Institute published the book Synergetic Stew: Explorations in Dymaxion Dining in 1982. Under this name, synchronofile.com publishes an irregular collection of brief notes relating to Buckminster Fuller.

You are Listening to Deep Thoughts is a simple mix of a gentle background image, a quiet ambient music track and a recording of a thoughtful public speaker. More often than not, the thoughtful public speaker is R. Buckminster Fuller.

☂ “Network Awesome is a platform for entertaining and interesting TV. We spotlight the best from the past to create something new for the future. In a sense it’s TV about TV but our wider intent is to show something about culture as a whole. This can manifest itself in a kids cartoon from 1973, an interview from 1948 or a movie from 1993 – We’re pretty open minded about what Network Awesome is and what it can be. It’s our commitment to provide you what we think is interesting and clever TV - hopefully you agree.” Video of R. Buckminster Fuller regularly appears on Network Awesome.

A Picture History of Shelter Systems is just what it says on the box. Founder Bob Gillis owns several key patents for modern camping tents that meet Fuller’s criterion of portability, tension rather than compression, curves and triangles rather than straight lines and 90-degree angles, industrial production and low cost. While there are many sculptures and models that use Kenneth Snelson’s tensegrity method, Gillis may be the only man to have created a tensegrity structure for habitation as Fuller advocated.

☂ On 3 July 1980 Fuller spoke as Visiting Consultant for Windstar in Snowmass Colorado USA. Co-founder of Windstar John Denver wrote a song for Fuller that year titled What One Man Can Do. A popular photograph from Fuller’s visit to Windstar shows him with the Dymaxion car and a Fly’s Eye dome. The Dymaxion Car was restored last year, and now the Fly’s Eye dome has also been restored. The dome will be on exhibit at Art Basel, Design Miami and Dacra, all located in Miami Beach Florida USA.

☂ As previously announced, D. W. Jacob’s play R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: THE HISTORY (and mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE was performed 28 May – 4 July 2010 at the Arena Stage Crystal City in Washington, DC USA. Perhaps for the first time, scenes from the play are now online. See also this trailer from the Portland performance in 2008, and Jacob and Allegra Fuller-Snyder talking about the 2011 run here. I’m glad to have seen the play several times over, but I do hope it is filmed in full some day.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com





R. Buckminster Fuller’s Influence on Science Fiction Films and Television


R. Buckminster Fuller’s influence on science fiction films and television during his lifetime (12 July 1895 – 1 July 1983).

First Spaceship on Venus
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1960. Film. Directed by Kurt Maetzig. Based on the novel The Astronauts by Stanisław Lem. An international rocket crew finds geodesic domes on the planet Venus.

Earth II
[IMDB]
1971. Television. Directed by Tom Gries.  A space station makes a claim for independence from the Earth it orbits.  R. Buckminster Fuller is credited as the “Technical Advisor for Earth” in Earth II. Fuller’s Dymaxion Map is used to track orbiting satellites in an Earth-bound control room.

Slaughterhouse 5
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1972. Film. Directed by George Roy Hill. Based on the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Billy Pilgrim is kept in a geodesic dome in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

Silent Running
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1972. Film. Directed by Douglas Trumbull.  The spaceship Valley Forge includes several geodesic domes.

The Starlost
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube] [The Starlost: The Word]
22 September 1973 – 5 January 1974. Television. Directed by Leo Orenstein. Created by Harlan Ellison. Executive Producer was Douglas Trumbull of Silent Running.  A geodesic dome from the spaceship Valley Forge from Silent Running is re-used on the spaceship The Ark.

Battlestar Galactica
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [Battlestar Wiki: Agro Ship]
September 17, 1978 – April 29, 1979. Television. Created by Glen A. Larson.
The geodesic dome from the spaceship Valley Forge from Silent Running which had been re-used on the spaceship The Ark in The Starlost is re-used once more on an Argo Ship. This dome is on exhibit at the EMP Science Fiction Museum between 23 October 2010 - 4 March 2012.

See also LOST Domes.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com





R. Buckminster Fuller: A Verb on Two Legs


In celebration of R. Buckminster Fuller and the 12 of July, the background images from my lecture “The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller” as an 11 minute silent b/w video.

Also: for the month of July 2010 my two books on Fuller are deeply discounted.  This is the month to buy them!

The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography - buy now for $35.00 $25.00 $1.99.

A Study of Shelter Logistics for Marine Corps Aviation - buy now for $25.00 [TEMPORARILY OUT OF PRINT]

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com





4D House in 3D


Buckminster Fuller’s 4D House in three dimensions. A work in progress by Trevor Blake of synchronofile.com. Silent, B/W, 30 seconds.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com