From Library Journal
Buckminster Fuller's talents bridged architecture, engineering, and industrial design, and his interest in prefabricated units, constructed from industrial materials, marked his designs as among the most inventive of the 20th century. In their economy and conservation of energy, his works far exceeded anything envisioned by International Style architects of his time. This volume, the result of an exhibition held at five European design museums, consists primarily of archival documentation from the Buckminster Fuller Institute. Each chapter examines a design, beginning with a brief descriptive paragraph and including substantial excerpts from Fuller's lectures, manuscripts, and publications in addition to sketches, photographs, patent application drawings, and engineering drawings. The result is engaging, visually stunning, and highly informative if at times also confusing, overwrought, and breathless. Regrettably, there is some ambiguity as to which caption describes which illustration. Nevertheless, this book well complements Inventions: The Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller (St. Martin's, 1983). For architecture and design collections.-Paul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Your Private Sky: R Buckminster Fuller: Discourse FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In this companion volume to the "visual reader" Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller; The Art of Design Science Fuller is heard primarily through his own writings, in which he expounded his world view and his ideas about design. Essays by other authors supplement and augment the selection of Fuller texts. The book collects important unpublished works and key texts that are not easily available, choosing from all phases of his creativity, and places them in the context of an art and science of design, in the sense implied in Fuller's term design science. The selection of texts provides access to Fuller's central concepts at the point they were first developed and presents them in their earliest valid formulation. The book thus affords a genuine look into his workshop of ideas. The volume includes texts that have become classics in the philosophy of design: Fuller's first essay, "Lightful Houses," the lecture on his Dymaxion House, the first papers on synergetic geometry, and the tensegrity essay. The book also includes a facsimile of his previously unpublished basic text on the construction of geodesic domes, "Noah's Ark #2.""--BOOK JACKET.
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