Person

Buckminster Fuller

Related Excerpts

A rendering of Buckminster Fuller and June Jordan's “Skyrise for Harlem” project published in Esquire, April 1965.

Nowhere But Up

In the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots, June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s plan to redesign the neighborhood suggested new possibilities for urban life.
Buckminster Fuller looking at a model of a geodesic dome.

Buckminster Fuller’s Hall of Mirrors

Alec Nevala-Lee’s new biography assesses the complicated legacy of an architect better known for his image than his work.
Cartoon of Buckminster Fuller with spirals in his glasses and hands out as if hypnotizing the reader.

Space-Age Magus

From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?
Drawing depicting Buckminster Fuller in front of a dome

Buckminster Fuller’s Greatest Invention

His vision of a tech-optimized future inspired a generation. But his true talent was for burnishing his own image.
Sketch of Harlem reimagined

How a Harlem Skyrise Got Hijacked—and Forgotten

The fate of June Jordan’s visionary reimagining of Harlem shows that when it comes to Utopias, the key question is always: “Whose?”
Headstones in Mount Auburn cemetery. Photograph by Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18003519.
original

A Tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery

Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.
Collage of of Stewart Brand peeking out from behind the earth.

Stewart Brand’s Dubious Futurism

What did the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog stand for?

The Story of an Unrealized Domed City for Minnesota

The Experimental City revisits the plan for a futuristic Minnesota city that would solve urban problems.