Buckminster Fuller Inc. Cover
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Mark Wigley

Buckminster Fuller Inc.

Architecture in the Age of Radio

The real architecture of our world is that of electromagnetic frequencies. We are constantly being reshaped by countless overlapping waves that pulse through our buildings and bodies. Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio extensively explores Richard Buckminster Fuller’s work and thought, shedding new light on the questions raised by our increasingly electronic world.

The publication investigates Fuller’s multi-dimensional reflections on the architecture of radio and his idea that the real site of architecture is the electromagnetic spectrum. It draws on Fuller’s archive to follow his radical thinking from toilets to telepathy, plastic to prosthetics, nanostructures to networks, and deep data to deep space.

Buckminster Fuller Inc. rethinks the legacy of one of the key protagonists of the twentieth century – a unique amalgam of theorist, designer and performance artist –and becomes a crucial reference point in trying to understand the development and impact of our electronic environment.

The real architecture of our world is that of electromagnetic frequencies. We are constantly being reshaped by countless overlapping waves that pulse through our buildings and bodies. Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio extensively explores Richard Buckminster Fuller’s work and thought, shedding new light on the questions raised by our increasingly electronic world.

The publication investigates Fuller’s multi-dimensional reflections on the architecture of radio and his idea that the real site of architecture is the electromagnetic spectrum. It draws on Fuller’s archive to follow his radical thinking from toilets to telepathy, plastic to prosthetics, nanostructures to networks, and deep data to deep space.

Buckminster Fuller Inc. rethinks the legacy of one of the key protagonists of the twentieth century – a unique amalgam of theorist, designer and performance artist –and becomes a crucial reference point in trying to understand the development and impact of our electronic environment.

“Buckminster Fuller Inc. is an enlightening read that will expand your thinking on some of the urgently relevant topics of our modern world.”
– design anthology

Author(s): Mark Wigley

Design: Integral Lars Müller

16,5 x 24 cm, 6 ½ x 9 ½ in

336 pages, 377 illustrations

paperback

2016, 978-3-03778-428-0, English
Architectural Research Theory R. Buckminster Fuller
CHF 38.00

Mark Wigley

Mark Wigley (*1956) is a Professor and Dean Emeritus at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. As an architectural theorist and historian, Wigley explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His publications include “Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio” (2016), “Cutting Matta-Clark: The Anarchitecture Investigation” (2018) and “Are We Human: Notes on an Archaeology of Design” that he published together with Beatriz Colomina in association with their curation of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial. Wigley was born in New Zealand, where trained as an architect, and lives in New York.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts. After spending most of his youth in Massachusetts and on Bear Island in Maine, he fell out of Harvard and into the US Navy during World War I. He married Anne Hewlett, the daughter of a prominent New York architect, in 1917 and spent around five years working with his father-in-law on new techniques of housing construction after leaving the navy. From 1927 on he became independent and committed himself to completely rethinking the question of shelter—relentlessly challenging every assumption about structure, function, materials, technology, aesthetics, services, distribution, mobility, communication, collaboration, information, recycling, politics, property, and social norms. He started from first principles to develop a radical philosophy of doing “vastly more with vastly and invisibly less.” The constant goal was a much more efficient and equitable distribution of planetary resources to enable the survival and ongoing evolution of the human species. His work paralleled, radicalized, and critiqued the mainstreams of modern architecture and still defies categorization today. He was a nonstop teacher and communicator around the globe in every possible medium—becoming probably the single most exposed designer and design theorist of the twentieth century. He died on July 1, 1983, in Los Angeles at the bedside of his wife, who died thirty-six hours later.

CHF 38.00