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> "Fuller told The New Yorker in 1966. Appealing to people to remedy their behaviour was a folly, because they’d simply never do it. Far wiser, Fuller thought,
by cconcepts 10y ago
> "Fuller told The New Yorker in 1966. Appealing to people to remedy their behaviour was a folly, because they’d simply never do it. Far wiser, Fuller thought, to build technology that circumvents the flaws in human behaviour – that is, ‘to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions’. Instead of human-led design, he sought design-led humans"
You have to applaud Fuller for this insight which many similarly brilliant minds don't seem to grasp. Perhaps he can be included in this group;
1) Geodesic domes are a mathematically brilliant design but hopelessly impractical for many structures. Try fitting furniture in a curved house and dealing with a shape that either causes you to bump your head when you get to the edges or is so high in the center that you have an unnecessary volume to heat/cool.
2) The dymaxion car was similarly brilliant but completely missed the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the dymaxion did not.
The guy was a genius in my opinion but the failure of his incredible ideas to take off on a large scale shows that perhaps they appeal to my mind more for their idealism than practicality.
NOTE: Am currently reading Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth
- zardo 10y ago>The dymaxion car was similarly brilliant but completely missed the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the dymaxion did not. The dymaxion was considered cool. But it was going to be expensive, and it earned a reputation as a death trap after a fatal crash at a marketing event.
- cconcepts 10y agoDid not know about the crash.
- tomcam 10y agoGood luck reading what he wrote. His ideas were sold better by others. His writing is almost impenetrable. And ditto to everything parent said. Been studying him on and off for 40 years and in many ways he was his own worst enemy.
- jacobolus 10y agoI think you need to be fully immersed in his whole body of work and frame of mind before you can understand what he’s saying. Sort of like Hegel or something. From outside it’s impenetrable, but once you start to figure out what he’s getting at a lot of it clicks together.
- Stratoscope 10y ago> ...the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool... You know that's not true, don't you? My car - an old Kia Rondo - doesn't look cool at all. And it's hardly any kind of status symbol. But it gets me places where I need to go, and it lets me take stuff that I need to take. That's the real reason I bought it.
- white-flame 10y agoand besides just your personal anecdote, there are observably WAY more uncool non-status symbol cars on the road than there are cool status ones.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gt2 10y ago> Try fitting furniture in a curved house some really cool houses I've seen in magazines and books don't have furniture arranged along walls -- the furniture is arranged in ways that create their own 'walls' within the space. > completely missed the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the dymaxion did not. I think the dymaxion would have looked cool and futuristic at the current time it was produced.
- gt2 10y ago> Try fitting furniture in a curved house some really cool houses I've seen in magazines and books don't have furniture arranged along walls -- the furniture is arranged in ways that create their own 'walls' within the space. > completely missed the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the dymaxion did not. I think the dymaxion would have looked cool and futuristic at the current time it was produced.
- DennisP 10y agoMy brother lives in a geodesic dome, and it doesn't have these problems. The furniture fits in just fine. The high part in the center is occupied by a loft, with the master bedroom.