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Fuller became famous for his huge geodesic domes, which can be seen as part of military radar stations, city halls, and exhibition attractions. Their construction is based on extending basic principles to build simple tensegrity structures ( tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of sphereFor other uses, see sphere (disambiguation). A sphere is, roughly speaking, a ball-shaped object. In non-mathematical usage a sphere is often considered to be solid (which mathematicians call ball . But in mathematics, a sphere is the boundary of a ball,s). Built in this way they are extremely lightweight and stable. After getting a first patent for his domes in 1954Events January events January 14 The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with Nash-Kelvinator forming the American Motors Corporation January 14 Marilyn Monroe weds Joe DiMaggio. January 15 Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya January 20 The Nati, Fuller went on to explore nature's constructing principles to find solutions for designs in many areas of human life. He designed and built a safer, aerodynamicFluid dynamics Aerodynamics is a branch of fluid dynamics concerned with the study of gas flows. The solution of an aerodynamic problem normally involves calculating for various properties of the flow, such as velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, Dymaxion carThe Dymaxion car was a concept car built in 1933 and designed by Buckminster Fuller. The car was a high efficiency vehicle with a then unheard of fuel efficiency of 30 miles per Gallon and it could move 11 passengers along at 120 miles per hour. The car w, a more accurate Dymaxion Map, energy-efficient and low-cost Dymaxion houseThe Dymaxion House was developed by inventor Buckminster Fuller to address several failures he perceived with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several different versions of the house at different times, but they were factory manufactureds (the term " DymaxionThe term dymaxion was used by inventor Buckminster Fuller for several of his projects, such as the Dymaxion car and Dymaxion House or the Dymaxion Map. Compounded of "DYnamic", "MAXimum" and "tensION", it was essentially a marketing buzzword or trademark" is contracted from DYnamic MAXimum tensION), radically strong and light tensegrity structures and much more.
Deploring waste, Fuller explored and advocated a principle that he termed " ephemeralizationBuckminster Fuller sometimes used the illustration of a compact Telstar satellite, weighing just a few hundred pounds, functionally replacing some 750,000 tons of transatlantic cable, as an example of his concept of "ephemeralization. The thinker and auth" - which (according to Stewart Brand) Fuller defined as "doing more with less." He also introduced synergetics , which explores holistic engineering structures in nature (long before the term synergy became popular).
One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It has several innovative features, including revolving dresser drawers, a fine-mist shower that reduces water consumption and variable siting for enhanced atmospheric circulation. According to Fuller biographer Steve Crooks, the house was designed to be delivered in two cylindrical packages, with interior color panels available at local dealers' stores. The house was designed to rotate around a central mast to take advantage of natural winds for cooling and circulation. The American Pavilion of Expo '67, by R. Buckminster Fuller, now the Biosphère, on Île Sainte-Hélène, Montreal. A geodesic dome is a structure developed by Buckminster Fuller in the 1940s in line with his "synergetic" thinking.
His most lasting insights may be geometric. He claimed that the natural analytic geometry of the universe was based on arrays of tetrahedra. He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members required to stabilize an object in space. Some deep confirming results were that the strongest possible homogenous truss is cyclically tetrahedral, and all solids constructed of regular polygons, except the icosahedron, have a volume that is an integral number of unit-tetrahedrons.
Buckminster Fuller was one of the first to propagate a systemic worldview (see 'Operating manual for Spaceship Earth', 'Synergetics') and explored principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.
A new allotrope of carbon ( fullerene) and a particular molecule of that allotrope ( buckminsterfullerene or buckyballs) have been named after him.
Fuller coined the term (but did not invent) tensegrity. He also coined the phrases world around and Spaceship Earth.
On July 12, 2004 the United States Post Office released a new commemorative stamp honoring Buckminster Fuller on the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome and on the occasion of his 109th birthday.