Celebrate the radical optimism of Buckminster Fuller during the month of his birth 123 years ago!

Buckminster Fuller: Ideas and Integrities

A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By R. Buckminster Fuller.

In Ideas and Integrities Buckminster Fuller describes the revolutionary designs and concepts he has pioneered – among them the geodesic dome, the Dymaxion world map, the Dymaxion 4-D house, the Dymaxion 4-D automobile, and the countless other structures and creations that have changed the face of America and the world. And he sets forth his amazing and challenging ideas for the world of the future – ideas that would revolutionize everything from university education to bathroom design, ideas that, above all, demonstrate how we can and must make far more imaginative and efficient use of the resources now available to us to ensure a better standard of living for all men.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.75 x 7 in. / 416 pgs / 50 images.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/29/2009
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ISBN 9783037781982 TRADE
List Price: $29.90 CDN $39.95

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Buckminster Fuller Inc.

Architecture in the Age of Radio

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By Mark Wigley.

Bucky Inc. offers a deep exploration of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s work and thought to shed new light on the questions raised by our increasingly electronic world. It shows that Fuller’s entire career was a multi-dimensional reflection on the architecture of radio. He always insisted that the real site of architecture is the electromagnetic spectrum. His buildings were delicate mobile instruments for accessing the invisible universe of overlapping signals. Every detail was understood as a way of tuning into hidden waves. Architecture was built in, with, for and as radio.

Bucky Inc. rethinks the legacy of one of the key protagonists of the twentieth-century. It draws extensively on Fuller’s archive to follow his radical thinking from toilets to telepathy, plastic to prosthetics, and data to deep-space. It shows how the critical arguments and material techniques of arguably the single most exposed designer of the last century were overlooked at the time but have become urgently relevant today.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 336 pgs / 337 images.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/15/2015
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ISBN 9783037784280 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CDN $47.50

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In stock

Education Automation

Comprehensive Learning for Emergent Humanity

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By R. Buckminster Fuller, Jaime Snyder.

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. For more than five decades, he set forth his comprehensive perspective on the world's problems in numerous essays, which offer an illuminating insight into the intellectual universe of this “renaissance man.” These texts remain surprisingly topical even today, decades after their initial publication. While Fuller wrote the works in the 1960's and 1970's, they could not be more timely: like desperately needed time-capsules of wisdom for the critical moment he foresaw, and in which we find ourselves. Long out of print, they are now being published again, together with commentary by Jaime Snyder, the grandson of Buckminster Fuller. Designed for a new generation of readers, Snyder prepared these editions with supplementary material providing background on the texts, factual updates, and interpretation of his visionary ideas. A biography of Buckminster Fuller's “thought development,“ Ideas and Integrities presents an intimate self-portrait of the experiences and discoveries behind his groundbreaking ideas and inventions. Through in-depth essays like “Total Thinking,” “Design for Survival – Plus,” and “The Comprehensive Man,” spanning the period from his earliest writings to the invention of the geodesic dome and his explosion onto the world stage, he delivers a powerful manifesto for the comprehensive design revolution he had championed: “To make man a success on earth.... we must design our way to positive effectiveness.” Buckminster Fuller's prophetic 1962 book Education Automation brilliantly anticipated the need to rethink learning in light of a dawning revolution in informational technology – “upcoming major world industry.” Along with other essays on education, including “Breaking the Shell of Permitted Ignorance,” “Children: the True Scientists” and “Mistake Mystique” this volume presents a powerful approach for preparing ourselves to face epochal changes on spaceship earth: “whether we are going to make it or not... is really up to each one of us; it is not something we can delegate to the politicians – what kind of world are you really going to have?”

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.75 x 7.5 in. / 224 pgs / 15 images.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/1/2009
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ISBN 9783037781999 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CDN $39.95

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In stock

Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller's World Game

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By Mark Wasiuta.

Buckminster Fuller’s humanitarian take on the war game

Initially proposed for the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Buckminster Fuller’s World Game was an educational simulation intended to create solutions for overpopulation and the uneven distribution of global resources. An alternative to war games, it uses Fuller’s Dymaxion map and requires a group of players to cooperatively solve a set of metaphorical scenarios, thereby challenging the nation-state perspective with a more holistic “total world” view.

The World Game was played for the first time in 1969 in New York, and evolved over the next decade. Proposals for World Game centers described a vast computerized network that could process, map and visualize environmental information drawn from (among other sources) Russian and American spy satellites. Fuller claimed that their optical sensors and thermographic scanners could detect the location and quantity of water, grain, metals, livestock, human populations or any other conceivable form of energy.

Despite Fuller’s plans for a photogenic, televisual and cybernetic form of mass participation, through Fuller’s life the World Game remained largely speculative and pedagogical. It appeared primarily through copious research reports, resource studies and ephemeral workshops. The book tracks this textual dimension by assembling documents related to various instances of the World Game conceived, proposed and played from 1964 to 1982, examining the World Game as a system for environmental information and as a process of resource administration.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 240 pgs / 150 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 1/21/2020
Forthcoming

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D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2018 p. 46   

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ISBN 9783037785539 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CDN $47.50

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Awaiting stock

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By R. Buckminster Fuller.

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. For more than five decades, he set forth his comprehensive perspective on the world’s problems in numerous essays, which offer an illuminating insight into the intellectual universe of this renaissance man. These texts remain surprisingly topical even today, decades after their initial publication. While Fuller wrote the works in the 1960’s and 1970’s, they could not be more timely: like desperately needed time-capsules of wisdom for the critical moment he foresaw, and in which we find ourselves. Long out of print, they are now being published again, together with commentary by Jaime Snyder, the grandson of Buckminster Fuller. Designed for a new generation of readers, Snyder prepared these editions with supplementary material providing background on the texts, factual updates, and interpretation of his visionary ideas.

Initially published in 1969, and one of Fuller’s most popular works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth is a brilliant synthesis of his world view. In this very accessible volume, Fuller investigates the great challenges facing humanity, and the principles for avoiding extinction and “exercising our option to make it.” How will humanity survive? How does automation influence individualization? How can we utilize our resources more effectively to realize our potential to end poverty in this generation? He questions the concept of specialization, calls for a design revolution of innovation, and offers advice on how to guide “spaceship earth” toward a sustainable future.And it Came to Pass – Not to Stay brings together Buckminster Fuller’s lyrical and philosophical best, including seven “essays“ in a form he called his “ventilated prose”, and as always addressing the current global crisis and his predictions for the future. These essays, including “How Little I Know”, “What I am Trying to Do”, “Soft Revolution”, and “Ethics”, put the task of ushering in a new era of humanity in the context of “always starting with the universe.“ In rare form, Fuller elegantly weaves the personal, the playful, the simple, and the profound.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.75 x 7.5 in. / 152 pgs / 7 images.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 7/15/2008
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ISBN 9783037781265 TRADE
List Price: $19.95 CDN $27.95

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In stock

Charas: The Improbable Dome Builders

Published by Pioneer Works Press/The Song Cave.
Introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Text by Syeus Mottel. Interview by Ben Estes.

A story of the ’70s: when six New York ex-gangsters met Buckminster Fuller and built a geodesic dome

In 1970 a meeting took place in an empty loft on the Lower East Side of Manhattan between R. Buckminster Fuller, the revolutionary architect and inventor of the geodesic dome, and six ex-gang members who called themselves “CHARAS.” After a few hours, they found themselves having an earnest and important conversation, and the young men of CHARAS decided to begin implementing Bucky’s ideas. They wanted to create a program that would develop a sense of community autonomy, reclaim public space and give their lives a newfound sense of purpose. Following a period of intensive study of solid geometry, spherical trigonometry and principles of dome building, all led by Michael Ben-Eli, CHARAS constructed a geodesic dome on a vacant lot in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge.

Originally published in 1973 and now published in an expanded edition, Charas: The Improbable Dome Builders is an intimate portrait in pictures and words of these dynamic young men and their community. The first half chronicles the trials and tribulations of building the dome, their intensive training, search for funding, accidental fires, holiday potlucks and Bucky visiting to see their incredible work. The second half contains interviews with the members of CHARAS and their friends, sharing personal stories of their time on the streets, as gang leaders, drug addicts, serving time in prison and finding a new sense of self and community through the applied philosophies of Buckminster Fuller. This edition also includes a new interview with Michael Ben-Eli looking back on the project four decades later.

PUBLISHER
Pioneer Works Press/The Song Cave

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 240 pgs / 150 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/27/2018
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Catalog: SPRING 2018 p. 47   

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ISBN 9781945711053 TRADE
List Price: $27.00 CDN $37.00 GBP £24.00

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Out of stock

Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller

The Art of Design Science

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
Edited by Joachim Krausse, Claude Lichtenstein.

In light of the reawakening interest in R. Buckminster Fuller’s works and thoughts, and of their growing importance for our technological world, it is time for a reedition of this comprehensive and legendary publication from 1999. The visual reader Your Private Sky examines and documents Fuller’s theories, ideas and projects, and critically deals with his ideology of “rescue through technology.” This book provides a highly multifaceted insight into Fuller’s world, also showing many of its less known sides.

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was one of the most revolutionary technological visionaries of the 20th century. He established new standards that can be seen as decisive for future-capable design. “How to make the world work” – to this task he dedicated his unflagging attention. Convinced that specialists usually create more problems than they solve, he developed his concept for a vision of the whole.
As an architect, engineer, entrepreneur and poet, he was a quintessentially American self-made man. But he was also an outsider: a technologist with a poet’s imagination who already developed theories of environmental control in the thirties and who anticipated the globalization of our planet. Catchphrases of our time, like “Spaceship Earth”, “synergetic”, or “think global, act local” – can directly or indirectly be traced back to Bucky.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 528 pgs / 600 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 7/30/2017
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ISBN 9783037785249 TRADE
List Price: $40.00 CDN $54.00

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In stock

Buckminster Fuller: Dymaxion Car

Published by Ivorypress.
Edited by Hsiao-Yun Chu, David Jenkins. Text by Jonathan Glancey, Norman Foster.

In 1933, the visionary architect, engineer and designer Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) built a car that was at that time the world's most fuel-efficient car. The Dymaxion Car ran on 35 miles per gallon, while every other car on the road struggled to manage half that amount; zeppelin-like in appearance, it was streamlined to minimize wind resistance and was capable of carrying six to eight passengers. Fuller designed two more Dymaxion Cars over the following year, though none of the three saw production. In his book Everything I Know (1975), Fuller remembered: "Many people said to me, after I built three of these cars, 'I'm sorry your car wasn't a success.' And I'd say 'What do you mean?' They said, 'Well you didn't get it into production.' I said, 'I wasn't going into business, I was producing a vehicle. And it was extremely successful. I learned an incredible amount.'" Today the Dymaxion Cars look dynamic, beautifully designed and several paradigm shifts ahead of their time, and Norman Foster has taken up their legacy with a new vehicle of his own. This monograph reconstructs the history of Fuller's first three models for the Dymaxion Car through detailed plans and archival photographs, and relates the production process of Dymaxion #4, a new prototype produced by Norman Foster, which was launched on the street in 2010.

PUBLISHER
Ivorypress

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 10 x 10.25 in. / 224 pgs / 111 color / 135 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/28/2011
Out of print

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D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 116   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780956433930 TRADE
List Price: $75.00 CDN $90.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Fuller Houses

R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Dwellings and Other Domestic Adventures

Published by Lars Müller Publishers.
By Federico Neder.

With the publication of the Dymaxion House in 1929, Buckminster Fuller became an overnight sensation in the world of American architecture. It was an uncompromising design and spectacularly novel. The living areas were hexagonal and attached around a central supply tower, and the multistory interior was fully climate-controlled. The house was conceived as completely self-sufficient – all the necessary supply modules were contained in the tower, including water and wastewater, energy production, and air filters. The rooms were equipped with the most modern furnishings and fixtures. The approximately 150 m2 house weighed just 3 tons, cost no more than a car, and was designed to be constructed and dismantled anytime and anywhere. The house reflected Fuller’s basic technological principle, his determination to achieve the greatest possible utility at the smallest possible cost in terms of energy and materials by making use of everything that science and technology have to offer. With its self-supporting structure and self-sufficiency, it also reflected another of Fuller’s axioms: “A house should be completely self-sufficient and autonomous, just like a person.” The Dymaxion House (which was only actually realized in other variants, such as the Wichita House) is widely viewed as a precursor to his geodesic domes.

PUBLISHER
Lars Müller Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 9.25 in. / 240 pgs / 170 images.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/17/2008
Out of print

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ISBN 9783037781418 TRADE
List Price: $39.90 CDN $50.00

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We Are All Astronauts

The Universe of Richard Buckminster Fuller as Reflected by Contemporary Art

Published by Kerber.
Edited by Marta Herford, Markus Richter. Text by Joachim Krausse, Dana Miller, Roland Nachtigäller, Markus Richter.

As an exponent of holism and experiment, Buckminster Fuller was an exemplary figure to many artists in his lifetime, and his relevance has only gained. This volume looks at his influence upon such artists as José Dávila, Olafur Eliasson, Simon Dybbroe Møller, David Maljkovic, Hermann Maier Neustadt, N55, Pedro Reyes, Tomás Saraceno, Albrecht Schäfer, Ai Weiwei and Beat Zoderer.

PUBLISHER
Kerber

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.75 x 10.5 in. / 248 pgs / 148 color / 46 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 4/30/2012
Out of stock indefinitely

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D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 163   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783866785762 TRADE
List Price: $55.00 CDN $72.50

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Not available