1.Designing A World That Works For Everyone Introduction to Comprehensive Design Science and Other Insights of R. Buckminster Fuller 2003 Greg Watson

2. Introduction

Who Was Buckminster Fuller?

Fullers Worldview

What Was He Trying To Do?

What Is The Significance of His Work?

3. Who Was Buckminster Fuller? 4. I made up my mind as a Rule of Communication that I wouldn't care if I was not understood--so long as I was not misunderstood. 5. Bucky

Architect

Designer

Inventor

Cartographer

Geometer

Philosopher

Cosmologist

Humanist

Passenger aboard Spaceship Earth

Guinea Pig B

6.

Geodesic Dome

Dymaxion Car

Dymaxion Rowing Shell

Dymaxion House

Dymaxion Map

Octet Truss

Synergetic Geometry

INVENTOR 7. Patents & Honors

Awarded 25 U.S. Patents

Authored 28 Books

Received 28 honorary degrees in art, sciences, engineering, and humanities

Received the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1981

8. " A true renaissance man and one of the greatest minds of our times, Richard Buckminster Fuller's contribution as a geometrician, educator, and architect-designer are the benchmarks of accomplishment in their fields. Among his most notable inventions and discoveries are synergetic geometry, geodesic structures, and tensegrity structures. Mr. Fuller reminds us all that America is a place of pioneers, haven for innovation and the free expression of ideas". Buckminster Fuller's Medal of Freedom citation, received from President Reagan in 1981 reads as follows: 9. What Was He Trying To Do?

I deliberately undertook to experiment to see what the little human being could do, if anything, on behalf of all humanity.

What I am looking for in this total picture is an answer to that one great question:

Does humanity have a function in Universe?

10. 11.

Among all forms of biological life,

humans have one extraordinary capability, which is mind.

This is humanitys contact with the eternal:

Our ability to locate the absolute reliability of design.

Human mind sees the generalized principles,

collects that information and discovers its significance,

and winds up employing it in a very big way.

12. Technology As Pure Principle

General Principal

Leverage

A:B = NL:NK

(Eternal)

Special Case(Application) 13. There is no energy crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis. There is a crisis of ignorance. Buckminster Fuller 14. Why Is He Important?

Synergy

Whole Systems Thinking

Synergetic Geometry

Tensegrity

Design Science

Fuller Projection

Spaceship Earth

World Game

EarthScope

15. Synergy

The behavior ofwhole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately

Synergy represents the integrated behaviors instead of all the differentiated behaviors of natures galaxy systems and galaxy of galaxies

Synergy alone explains the eternally integrated integrity of Universe

16. Principle of Synergetic Advantage

Definition: The principle of synergetic advantage states that macro-to-micro does not equal micro-to-macro.Synergetic advantage is only to be effected by macro-to-micro procedure. Synergetic advantage procedures are irreversible. Micro-to-macro procedures are inherently frustrated.

Buckminster Fuller.Synergetics.

17. Principle of Synergetic Advantage

There is nothing in chemical compounds per se that predicts biological protoplasm.

There is nothing in the biological protoplasm per se that predicts camels and palm trees and the intercomplementary interexchange of the waste gases given off by them

There is nothing in the exchange of these gases that predicts galaxies and stars

18. Linear Addition + = 2 1 + 1 = 19. Synergetic Addition + = 4 1 + 1 = 20. Emergent Properties Closest packing of tetrahedra can only be accomplished with octahedra 21. Whole Systems Thinking

Problem solving begins by first considering Whole Systems

Analysis, the basis for all present day planning and policy-making, separates out parts from the whole for study

Analysis does not acknowledge the concept of synergy or the principle of synergetic advantage (macro-to-micro)

22. Whole Systems Corollaries

The whole cannot be predicted by studyingits parts in isolation

Comprehension of the whole alone leads to discovery of the significant intercomplementary functions to be played by the parts

To learn anything you must start with the whole with Universe

Think globally, act locally

23. Lack of understanding of whole systems is the source of our crisis of ignorance 24. Spaceship Earth 25.

You are orbiting around the Sun at66,000 mph

The Sun in turn is traveling 6 Km/sec. within the Milky Way

Your ship is a closed system with the exception of:

• Radiation from the Sun

• Gravitational effects of moon on the oceans and atmosphere

Your shipslife support systems have been seriously compromised

What do you do?

You Are Aboard a Spaceship 26. Where there is no vision, The people perish Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 27.

If you dont know where youre going,

you might not get there.

In Other Words Yogi Berra 28. 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 6 7 10 11 12 Design Science Planning Process 29. Design Science Planning Process Choose Problem Situation 1 Define Problems 2 Define Preferred State 3 Describe Present State 4 30. Design Preferred System 5 Inventory Alternatives 6 Develop Evaluation Criteria 7 Develop Implementation Strategies 8 Document Process 9 Develop Artifacts 10 Communicate Plan 11 Initiate Larger Planning Process 12 31. Seeing Nature Whole

Universe does not conform to a three-dimensional perpendicular-parallel frame of reference

The Universe of physical energy is always divergently expanding (radiantly) or convergently contracting (gravitationally)

Humans (and our inventions) are part of the natural world

32. Natures Coordinate System

Non Linear(cause and effect may not be apparent)

Based onenergy accounting(do more with less)

Does not extend to infinity(everything ends up somewhere)

Closes back on itself(consequences)

Includes feedback loops(learning)

60-degreeness vs. 90-degreeness

33. Natures Polyhedral Design 34. Systems A system is the first subdivision of Universe into a conceivable entity separating all that is nonsimultaneously and geometrically outside the system, ergo irrelevant, from all that is nonsimultaneously and geometrically inside and irrelevant to the system Buckminster Fuller.Synergetics 35. Polyhedra

All systems are polyhedra

Polyhedra representNaturesminimum inventory/maximum diversity structural/energy patterning options

36. Tetrahedron

A tetrahedron is a triangularly faceted polyhedron of four faces.

It is unique as a system, for it is the minimumand simplest structural system in Universe.

Tetrahedra can be experimentally demonstrated to betheoptimally economic, most comprehensive structurally integrated systems in Universe.

37. Laws of Form [A] universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please.G. Spencer Brown 38. Natures Polyhedral Design Pollen Hive 39. Volvox- freshwater colonial protozoan Geodesic Dome 40. Buckminsterfullerenes 41. Natures Tensegrity Design Strategy Scientific American January 1998 42. Structural Synergy + = Spheres have largest volume-to-surface ratio but are easily deformed by gravity and other forces Tetrahedra have smallest volume-to-surface ration, but are structurally rigid Geodesic Dome: Maximum space enclosure/structural integrity 43. Precession

Precession is the effect of any moving system upon any other moving system

Precessional effects are always angular and always something other than 180 degrees; they are very likely to be 90 degrees or 60 degrees

44.

Pollination is a precessional phenomenon

It is an inadvertent, unconscious 90-degree by-product of the honey bees instinctual urge to collect honey

45. Precessional Winds 46. Applied Precession 47. Tensegrity

Tensional Integrity

Structures emphasize tension and de-emphasize compression

A Tensegrity system is a set of discontinuous compressive components interacting with a set of continuous tensile components to define a stable volume in space

48. Ephemeralization

In a finite world with limited resources

the key to sustainability

is understanding how to doMORE WITH LESS

49. Design Science

Finding ways to organize our matter-energy environment to better support life

By employing generalized principles (Laws of Nature)

And discovering system trimtabscapable of transforming human life support systems in ways that

Supporthumans and other living beings using less material resources

Thereby creating real wealth

Ocean Arks InternationalsLiving Machines . 50. Dymaxion Map

The only flat map of the entire surface of the Earth that reveals our planet as it really is -an island in one ocean without any visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents.

51. Dy namic +max imum + tens ion=Dymaxion .Creating ever more life support using less and less resourcesBy using the Dymaxion Map in combination with the enormous database resources and computer graphics available today, it is now highly feasible to accurately and clearly display the inventory of world resources, trends and needs in multiple dimensions 52. Copyleft 1995 Christopher Rywalt. 53. Call Me Trimtab Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Marythe whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And theres a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim-tab. Its a miniature rudder. Just moving that little trim-tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim-tab. Society thinks its going right by you, that its left you altogether. But if youre doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, Call me Trimtab. -Excerpted from R. Buckminster Fuller tape transcript for Barry Farrell for Playboy interview, 2/1972. 54. Trimtab Principle

Using generalized principles to determine the set of actions which can be taken to change the course of a larger system.

55. Synergetics Synergetics, the comprehensive geometry I have systematized, unlike all other systems ofgeometry, incorporates both the physical and themetaphysical.The metaphysical involves that which can be experienced but is independent of size and is weightless and energyless, i.e. qualitative rather than quantitative. R. Buckminster Fuller 56. 4-Dimensional Coordinate System Vector Equilibrium x y z CartesianCoordinates 57. Radiation and Gravity Disintegrative radiation and integrative gravity in symbiosis describe the elusive object of the quest for a unified field. 58. Closest Packing 59. 2 Frequency Triangle 1 2 60. 3 Frequency Triangle 1 2 3 61. Closest packed spheres in a plane 60 o 62. Twelve spheres around center sphere 63. Vector Equilibrium 64. 0-frequency 10f 2 +2 = 12 65. 66. 2-frequency 10f 2 +2 = 42 67. 68. 3-frequency 10f 2 +2 = 92 69. 70. Isotropic Vector Matrix 71. Centers of Vector Equilibrium 72. 73. Copyright 1977 Mark DiamondJitterbug Transformations 74. Jitterbug Transformations 75. a 2+ b 2= c 2 a b c a b c 76. b 2 a 2 c 2 + = 77. a b c 78. The Case of theGhost Cube . . . . . . . . H W D 79. Parts of Whole System . . . . . . . . Vertex Face Edge 80. . . . . . . 81. Doing More With Less

Microelectronics

Biomimicry

Nanotechnology

Industrial Ecology

Sustainable Agriculture

82. "His life was so important that it shines almost with the same intensity now that it did when he had it." --John Cage