Lot 53: R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER 1895 - 1983 TENSEGRITY SPHERE together with the original corrugated fiberboard travelling case with affixed artist's business card, World Projection Dymaxion Map on posterboard, geometric wooden dowel models and smaller steel band demonstration model wooden dowels, aluminum and nylon executed circa 1975

Collection of the artist
By descent to the present owner

In the last 25 years of this life, Buckminster Fuller traveled the globe building his patented geodesic dome and delivering his message at universities and college of a "Design Revolution". During the last few years of his life, Buckminster Fuller was accompanied by the present lot, a wooden folding geodesic dome. The sphere, together with the flat custom corrugated fiberboard "suitcase" in which it traveled, was fabricated by a member of his Philadelphia-based staff. The sphere was accompanied in the "kit" by another demonstration model of the natural geometrical principles, and versions of the Dymaxion world map projection. This kit provided Fuller with important models he used in his lectures to illustrate fundamental principles of nature's design, the geometry of the universe, the big picture of "human trends and needs" and how lightweight high-performance building structures could be engineered.