It's friday afternoon and the week-end is almost there so it's a good time to read few things about Buckminster Fuller, isn't it? First in Metropolis, there's an interesting overview of his "legacy" by colleagues and admirers. And second, Popular Mechanics have a sort of retrospective called "10 Gonzo Machines From Rogue Inventor Buckminster Fuller:

"The late, great architect and inventor brought us the geodesic dome, but Buckminster Fuller’s often twisted, often brilliant vision extended far beyond air-conditioned sporting arenas. From super-efficient cars carrying lots of passengers to entire cities encapsulated by single roofs, he made Frank Lloyd Wright look positively normal, and his prescient engineering foreshadowed—and continues to inform—the movement toward green design and prefabricated housing. Here’s a handful of our favorite concepts from the Fuller retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York."

The one which amazes me is certainly the “Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map” which shows the land masses as there true sizes:

"Frustrated with the failure of cartographers to develop an accurate two-dimensional map of the world, Fuller used his geometric knack to create his own distortion-free projection. His “Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map” appeared in Life magazine in 1943 and remains one of the most geographically accurate world maps. "

Why do I blog this? pure curiosity in thinkers about space, urban environment and design.