History of Industrial Design Week 10 BONUS ROUND: Buckminster Fuller

Рет қаралды 6,429

4 жыл бұрын

These videos were made in 2020 as a desperate COVID-era attempt to help keep students engaged in learning as in-person teaching stopped. With no support, no resources, a ridiculous "production schedule," and no idea they would become a sort of permanent record of the time, I just threw them at KZfaq. The students mostly didn't watch them, but lots of others did, and that continues to amaze me. I decided to leave them up for anyone who is just curious about design.
NOTE: If you are a current student at Rhode Island School of Design and your professor has sent you here to watch these videos, you should really worry about how much tuition you are paying just to have a teacher sending you to KZfaq instead of teaching you themselves. Just saying...
Links:
Biosphere Burning:
• Fire at the biosphere ...
Dymaxion House:
• Buckminster Fuller's D...
Wichita
• Buckminster Fuller, Dy...
Dymaxion trial:
• Newsreel "Three wheele...
Foster:
• Video

Пікірлер: 17

@mcollins630 3 жыл бұрын

This is such a great channel. A real hidden gem.

@louw1992 2 жыл бұрын

I feel exactly the same! It makes me so so happy

@JM-zp9ik 2 жыл бұрын

Everybody knows that the Bird is the word. Excellent lecture.

@cosmicbodyguards4285 2 жыл бұрын

Inspiring, Sir! I loved learning about him from your channel. Thank you! I’m so grateful for your generosity in sharing these lectures.

@FlyBoyDash1 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you Matthew! My favorite architect is Paul Rudolph who taught at Yale and designed the Yale art and architecture building. Norman Foster (British architect) was a student of his who raves about Buckminister Fuller and his view on the natural as well as man made world.... You brought everything full circle with your lectures on Fuller & Walter Gropius!

@dennisferron8847 2 жыл бұрын

What I find interesting about the Dymaxion car is its seeming complete disregard for dynamic forces of cornering and braking. Despite the mid-rear engine location, I can only imagine such an overhang past the front wheels with the mass of the driver and bodywork would induce a tendency to nose dive under hard braking (not to mention wild inertial sensations for the driver). The static weight balance may be fine - ideal, even - but the real problem with this design from a dynamic handling perspective is once the center of balance (under deceleration) goes past the mid-mounted front wheels it's unrecoverable. Despite deference to Fuller's amazing ideas and legacy (I am a fan), I can't help noticing a through-line in all his projects of _solving the wrong problem_. But that makes sense if, as you said, he started with designs that optimize a parameter in an ideal way and then looked for applications so that the thing can get funded and built.

@jpkatz1435 2 жыл бұрын

The small disdain the big.

@bobroberts2371 3 жыл бұрын

8:02 Space Balls, Watch Out !!!!!

@MrVorpalsword Жыл бұрын

catching up with your lecture series, sorry if I turned up late .... when's the first exam?

@bobroberts2371 3 жыл бұрын

19:05 2001: A Space Odyssey

@nanwilder2853 2 жыл бұрын

FYI: You remarked that Fuller’s 1969 book was early for addressing the Environment... Are you aware that the seminal book on the Environment, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, came out in 1962?

@HistoryofID 2 жыл бұрын

Yes indeed!! And her even earlier and equally important today 1955 Edge of the Sea, which (for better and/or worse) inspired this lovely song from the 1957 Shoestring Revue: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/maxzbNN72Ni4aHk.html

@nanwilder2853 2 жыл бұрын

@@HistoryofID: My Ears, my Ears! That Rachel Carson-quoting song was probably the worst number I’ve ever heard in a musical, ever! Though since I had no idea that either musical or song existed, I DO thank you for providing the link, Prof. Bird. (Especially given that the LYRICS were right out of our current environmental headlines!) Yikes. Also, Sigh....

@balisticsquirel 4 жыл бұрын

i had heard that the dymaxion car was not about trying to develop a product that would go into production. But rather about trying to further concepts of what a car could be. So when i hear "not incorporated into our daily lives as Fuller intended" i hear a contradiction to the story i know. Sup w' dat? Do i 'know' a fallacy?

@HistoryofID 4 жыл бұрын

Many truths possible! I am sure the investors were hoping for something more tangible....

@HistoryofID 3 жыл бұрын

All I know is that financing the project was a HUGE problem and all investors suckered into supporting the project did so with the expectation of a return on their investment. Which doesn't really suggest a "discursive" intent. I suspect that is more Fuller rationalizing a project's shortcomings to make them seem less like failures and more like investigations?

@balisticsquirel 3 жыл бұрын

@@HistoryofID The scenario asks such interesting questions. Questions which i think there can be nothing but speculation on. For instance, my feel for how things went is that Fuller, and anyone in a similar position, needed to be constantly suckering people into investment. How they used the money, and whether what they told the investors was strictly true, was as much a 'deviation from marketing strategy' as exists today. As much a necessary lie. How much about ego? I''d love to know. Did Fuller say to himself "I'm the important inventor steering the future of invention and industry and the world, and so if i need to sucker a few people in order to explore and push then that's fine or even for the greater good"? He seems so much about selling himself, or a world view. So i could buy that he saw investment as investment in him, with fungeability to use. And i could also totally buy that he believed in the concept(s) of the dymaxion car and so sold it as a truly promising investment. If there are themes that run throughout design history, which aspiring designers, inventors, and 'industrial business' people have to decide for themselves, then "how much do i have to lie?" is certainly one of them. Maybe "how much do i have to sell myself as a personality in order to do the exploring i need to do?" is better. Fuller wrote books, did interviews, and maybe lied to dymaxion investors. Tesla released a concept truck with great flair to give people something to buy into. Elizabeth Holmes.... well.